Baku is one of the most surprising and least expected capitals on the continent. Looking out over the Caspian Sea, at the dry, windswept tip of the Absheron Peninsula, it packs into a few blocks a medieval walled city of stone alleys, a bourgeois 19th-century quarter built during the first oil rush, and a row of glass skyscrapers and signature architecture paid for by the second oil boom, well into the 21st century. It is theatrical, a little unreal, half Istanbul, half Dubai, with the old soul of a Silk Road city.
At its heart is Icherisheher, the World Heritage Old City, with its enigmatic Maiden Tower looking out to sea and the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, the dynasty that made Baku great. Around it spreads oil-era Baku: the Caspian boulevard for a sunset stroll, the three Flame Towers that dominate the city and turn into huge LED flames at night, and the Heydar Aliyev Center, the most famous work by architect Zaha Hadid, all white curves without a single straight line.
This guide helps you get around Baku with a practical eye: what it costs to enter the Maiden Tower and the Palace, how the metro and the BakiKart card work, how to get the e-visa, where to eat plov and kebab, how to use Bolt and which day trips to Gobustan and Absheron are worth doing. It is a safe, orderly city full of contrasts, and the best gateway to the land of fire.
Baku grew around its medieval citadel, Icherisheher, capital of the Shirvanshahs, the dynasty that ruled the kingdom of Shirvan from the Middle Ages and left behind the Palace and much of the city wall. Its name is usually linked to the wind ('bad kube', gust of wind) or to fire, because in this land oil and gas seeped out of the ground on their own and burned: the Zoroastrians considered it sacred. In the late 19th century, Baku lived through the first great oil boom in world history: it came to produce half of the planet's oil, filled up with the palaces of magnates such as the Nobels and the Rothschilds, and became a cosmopolitan city. It was the capital of the short-lived Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918-1920), the first secular republic in the Muslim world, then of Soviet Azerbaijan, and since 1991 of independent Azerbaijan, which used a second oil boom to turn it once again into today's capital of glass and flames. That story of fire, empires and oil is told on our history page.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
To understand Baku you have to start with fire, because everything comes from it, even the country's name. Azerbaijan is often translated as 'the land of fire', and that's not a tourist metaphor: on the Absheron Peninsula, where Baku sits, the ground is so full of oil and natural gas that for thousands of years they rose to the surface on their own and burned without going out, fed by gas seeping through cracks in the rock. There were hillsides that burned by themselves, springs whose water caught fire and flames coming out of the earth for no visible reason. To the ancient world, that could only be sacred.
Zoroastrianism took root in this land. It is the religion of the prophet Zarathustra, the main faith of the Persian Empire before Islam, and it reveres fire as a symbol of purity and of the divinity of Ahura Mazda. The eternal flames of Absheron made the area a place of worship and pilgrimage for Zoroastrians, and later also for Hindus and Sikhs who came from India along the trade routes. The Ateshgah fire temple, on the outskirts of Baku, is the best-known sign of this devotion to fire, kept alive for centuries.
The name Baku itself has been explained in several ways. Some trace it to the Persian 'bad kube' ('wind-pounded', after the fierce Caspian winds that earned it the nickname 'city of winds'), and others to expressions linked to fire and the divine. Fire and wind, the two elements that rule this dry, desert peninsula, are right there at the city's origin.
Historic Baku was born inside its walls, in the old quarter we now call Icherisheher, the 'Inner City'. People settled here very early, but the medieval city grew mostly from the 9th to the 12th centuries. At that time the region was part of the kingdom of Shirvan, ruled by the Shirvanshah dynasty, one of the longest-lasting in the Islamic world: through its various branches, it reigned over these lands of the eastern Caucasus for centuries. The mysterious Maiden Tower, whose origins may have been defensive or sacred, and much of the city walls date from that period.
Baku was then a port on the Caspian Sea and a stop on the Silk Road, travelled by caravans and merchants, which is why caravanserais still survive in the Old City. In the 15th century, Shah Khalilullah I moved the capital of the kingdom of Shirvan to Baku and built the Palace of the Shirvanshahs. This complex of golden limestone, with its mosque, its mausoleum and its divankhana, is the jewel of Azerbaijan's medieval architecture, and today it is a World Heritage Site together with the Tower and the walls.
In the 16th century the kingdom of Shirvan fell, like the rest of the region, under the control of Safavid Persia. Over the following centuries Persians, Ottomans and later the growing Russian Empire fought over Baku. In the 18th century it was even the capital of a small Baku Khanate, one of the many khanates the Azerbaijani lands split into as Persia weakened. It was still a modest walled town of narrow, dusty streets, with no hint of the colossal fortune hidden under its ground.
In 1806 the Russian Empire occupied Baku, and in 1813 and 1828, under the treaties of Gulistan and Turkmenchay, Persia gave all of present-day Azerbaijan to Russia. Baku became a provincial city of the tsars' empire. But under its ground lay the treasure that would change everything, and by the mid-19th century the world was starting to need it: oil.
In 1846, near Baku, one of the world's first oil wells was drilled with mechanical methods. That was more than a decade before the famous Pennsylvania well usually cited as the start of the industry. When demand for kerosene, and later for fuel, exploded over the following decades, Absheron turned out to be one of the largest oil fields on the planet, and Baku went through an oil rush much like a gold rush. By around 1900, the Baku region was producing nearly half of all the world's oil. The city filled up with drilling derricks, refineries and an industrial district called 'the Black City' because of the soot.
That wealth drew investors from all over the world and created a new class of tycoons. The Nobel brothers (from the same family as Alfred Nobel, of the prize) set up one of the biggest oil companies of their time here, the Rothschild family invested fortunes, and great local barons rose up, such as Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, who went from labourer to millionaire and philanthropist. With that money Baku was transformed. Grand palaces went up, along with theatres, the opera, European-style mansions and the Caspian boulevard, and the city became a cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic, modern capital where Azerbaijanis, Russians, Armenians, Jews, Persians and Europeans lived side by side. But beneath the glitter was a mass of oil workers living in extremely harsh conditions. It was a breeding ground for revolution, where, among others, a young man named Joseph Stalin learned his trade.
The collapse of the Russian Empire in the 1917 Revolution opened a chaotic and bloody period in Baku. With its mix of peoples and its mass of workers, the city saw fierce fighting between Bolsheviks, Azerbaijani nationalists, Armenians and foreign troops. In March 1918 ethnic clashes broke out that left thousands dead (the so-called 'March Days'). One after another, Baku was held by the Bolshevik Commune, then the 26 Baku Commissars (who were shot in murky circumstances), then Ottoman and British troops.
In the middle of that whirlwind, on 28 May 1918, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was proclaimed, with its capital first in Ganja and then in Baku. It was a historic event: the first parliamentary, secular republic in the Muslim world, and it gave women the vote before many European countries did. But it didn't last. In April 1920 the Red Army entered Baku and Azerbaijan was absorbed into the Soviet Union, first as part of a Transcaucasian federation and then as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.
Throughout seven decades of Soviet rule, Baku was a key part of the USSR because of its oil. In the Second World War, Baku's crude was vital to the Soviet war machine, and it was one of the main targets of the German invasion of 1942, which never managed to take it. The city grew with Stalinist architecture, monumental squares, the metro and heavy industry, and it became the cultural capital of the Caucasus. Towards the end of the Soviet era, with perestroika, nationalism came back strongly and conflict broke out with neighbouring Armenia over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. In January 1990, the Soviet crackdown on nationalist protests in Baku (known as 'Black January') killed more than a hundred people and marked a point of no return on the road to independence.
Azerbaijan declared independence in 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up, and the first years were very hard. The war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh ended in the mid-1990s with Azerbaijan's defeat and the occupation of almost a fifth of the country, leaving hundreds of thousands displaced and a deep economic crisis. In 1993 Heydar Aliyev, a former Soviet leader, came to power. He stabilised the country, and in 1994 he signed the so-called 'Contract of the Century' with the major international oil companies to develop Caspian oil. The same family has ruled ever since: in 2003 Heydar Aliyev was succeeded by his son Ilham, the current president.
That contract set off Baku's second great oil boom. With the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and high crude prices, huge revenues poured into the country in the 2000s and 2010s, and much of that money went into transforming the capital. Up went the Flame Towers, Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center, glass skyscrapers, motorways, National Flag Square and a whole waterfront of spectacular architecture. Baku set out to be an international showcase and began hosting major events: the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, the first European Games in 2015 and, since 2016, a Formula 1 Grand Prix raced between the skyscrapers and the medieval walls.
Today's Baku is a city of contrasts: the golden stone of the Shirvanshahs and the curved glass of Zaha Hadid, and oil still driving everything. Its gleaming modernity sits alongside a closed political system with no real freedom of expression, often criticised by human rights organisations. In 2023 Azerbaijan took back full control of Nagorno-Karabakh by force, ending a three-decade conflict. Behind the glow of the LED flames lies a dense history of fire, empires, oil and power, which makes Baku one of the most unusual and least understood capitals in the world.
