Baku dramatically blends old town and bold architecture. Içerisheher, the UNESCO-listed fortified medieval city, holds the mysterious Maiden Tower (Qız Qalası) and the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, a maze of lanes, caravanserais and workshops. Below stretches the Caspian Seaside Boulevard (Bulvar), a tree-lined promenade perfect at sunset. The late-19th-century, Haussmann-style centre, built on oil money, leads to the Heydar Aliyev Center, a curving masterpiece by Zaha Hadid. The Flame Towers loom over the city, lit up at night. For fresh air, head to the Absheron peninsula, its mud volcanoes and the Ateshgah fire temple. Tea houses, lively squares and the waterfront fill the evenings.
🎬« The World Is Not Enough » (1999), the Pierce Brosnan James Bond film, was shot in Baku and on the Caspian Sea in April 1999. The crew filmed at the Neft Daşları oil field (the « Oil Rocks ») and during a car chase through the Bibi-Heybat oilfields. With a plot built around oil, Azerbaijan made an ideal backdrop.
✨Baku is nicknamed the « city of winds » and Azerbaijan the « land of fire »: natural gas seeps have burned spontaneously here for millennia, as at Yanar Dağ near the city. This eternal fire inspired the Zoroastrians and gives shape to the famous Flame Towers, three skyscrapers built like flames.
🧭Lose yourself in the lanes of Içerisheher (the walled old town) at dawn, before the tour groups, around the Palace of the Shirvanshahs. A data eSIM makes it easy to book a Bolt and find your way around the Baku metro, elegantly decorated in the Soviet era.
ℹ️Spring (April-June) and autumn (September-October) are the most pleasant; summer is hot and windy, winter mild but blustery. The clean, cheap metro and the Bolt app cover most needs; get a BakiKart for metro and buses. Tip: the old town is walkable, no car needed. 4G coverage is excellent citywide and 5G is rolling out; public wifi is limited outside hotels and cafés, so a data eSIM is useful for maps, translation and transit apps.
