Without exaggeration, Naftalan is one of the strangest places in the world: an entire town devoted to bathing in crude oil. Not the oil that runs cars, but a special and rare type of crude, naftalan, dense and dark in colour, which has been used for medicinal purposes for over a century. In the town's sanatoriums, patients soak in tubs of this warm oil under medical supervision, seeking relief from skin diseases, joint pain and other conditions. There is no other spa like it on the planet.
The healing reputation of Naftalan's oil goes back a long way: the story goes that Silk Road caravans already used it to treat people and animals, and that Marco Polo mentioned an oil from the region that was used as a remedy. In Soviet times, Naftalan became a major health centre that drew patients from all over the USSR, with enormous sanatoriums; many left their crutches and walking sticks behind as a thank-you, and today a museum displays them. After years of decline, the town was reborn with modern spa hotels.
This guide helps you understand and enjoy Naftalan: what exactly the oil bath involves, what it's for and what precautions it calls for, what the sanatoriums and spa hotels are like, how much the treatments cost, how to get there from Ganja and Baku, and how to combine the experience with the rest of the west of the country. Whether for your health or out of sheer curiosity, soaking in oil in Naftalan is one of the most unusual experiences Azerbaijan has to offer.
The name Naftalan comes from the word for oil ('neft'), and the town's history is the story of the medicinal use of a unique crude. For centuries, people in the region used this thick oil to treat wounds, skin diseases and aches; medieval travellers, Marco Polo himself according to legend, mentioned a healing oil from these lands. In the late 19th century, a German entrepreneur set up the first production and exported naftalan ointments to Europe. In Soviet times, Naftalan became a large spa centre, with sanatoriums that received hundreds of thousands of patients from all over the USSR. After the Soviet collapse and the Nagorno-Karabakh war, which filled the sanatoriums with refugees, the town declined, and in the 21st century it was reborn with modern spa complexes such as the Chinar. The story of the oil that heals is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Azerbaijan's historic heartland: Ganja, city of the poet Nizami; Shamakhi, capital of the old kingdom of Shirvan, with one of the oldest mosques in the Caucasus; and unusual Naftalan, where the signature treatment is a bath in crude oil.
Read the history of The centre: Ganja, Shamakhi and Naftalan →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
There are spas built around hot springs, mud and salt. Naftalan is the only spa in the world whose signature treatment is a bath in crude oil. In this small city in west-central Azerbaijan, between Ganja and Barda, thousands of people each year sink into bathtubs of thick, dark crude warmed to body temperature, looking for relief for their skin, their joints and other ailments. The scene is so unusual it seems to belong on another planet, but there are centuries of history behind it.
The secret lies in the substance itself: Naftalan oil is no ordinary crude. It is a rare type, low in the light fractions used for fuel and rich in compounds called naphthenes, which are credited with medicinal properties. Because of this, instead of being refined into petrol, this oil was used as a remedy, first in folk medicine and later in official medicine, especially in the Soviet era.
The history of Naftalan is therefore the history of a unique relationship between a community and a substance. In Azerbaijan, 'the land of fire' and of oil, crude is everything: it drives the economy, it shaped the cities, it set the course of the country. But in Naftalan oil does something different: instead of burning or powering engines, it heals. That is what makes the place unique and charming.
The healing use of Naftalan oil goes back a long way. For centuries, people in the region knew this thick crude that seeped out of the ground, and they applied it to wounds, burns, skin diseases and aches, on both people and animals. Caravans crossing the area on the trade routes between East and West stocked up on it as a remedy for the road.
A widely repeated tradition credits the Venetian traveller Marco Polo, who passed through the Caucasus in the 13th century, with mentioning an oil from these lands that was no good for eating but was good for curing skin complaints and for rubbing on camels. Whether it is accurate or legendary, the story shows that the region's healing oil was already famous in the Middle Ages, long before any industry existed.
For centuries, then, naftalan was a folk remedy, a healing oil gathered by hand and applied according to traditional knowledge. The city of Naftalan did not exist yet: there were wells and natural seeps of this special crude, and a reputation that spread by word of mouth along the trade routes of the Caucasus. The leap into modern medicine would come at the end of the 19th century.
The move from folk remedy to modern production came at the end of the 19th century, at the height of Azerbaijan's oil boom. While Baku was becoming the world's oil capital, a German entrepreneur in the Naftalan area, drawn by the properties of the local oil, set up a business to exploit it not as fuel but as a medicinal product. The first naftalan ointments and creams came out of it, and they were exported to Europe and sold in pharmacies.
Naftalan thus earned a place in the medicine of the time: creams and ointments made from this refined crude were used to treat skin conditions, rheumatic pain and other ailments, and they were sold in several countries. The substance moved from the folk medicine of the Caucasus to the modern pharmacy, and its name became almost a brand. That recognition laid the groundwork for what came next.
The big development, however, came with the Soviet Union. The Soviet health system put great faith in spas and sanatoriums ('kurorts') as part of workers' health care, and it saw Naftalan as a unique resource. By the mid-20th century, the small cluster of healing wells began turning into something much bigger: a planned spa town devoted entirely to the oil that heals.
In the second half of the 20th century, Naftalan lived through its golden age. The Soviet Union built large sanatoriums there and turned the town into a leading health destination, drawing patients from every Soviet republic, from the Baltic to Central Asia. They came by the thousands every year, referred by doctors or sent by their employers and trade unions, for cures lasting several weeks based on oil baths and physiotherapy.
Naftalan's fame soared, above all because of its results with joint and skin conditions. Many patients who arrived on crutches, with canes or in wheelchairs because of rheumatic problems said they walked out after the cure, and they left their walking aids behind as a sign of gratitude. Those donated crutches and canes became the town's moving 'Crutch Museum', one of its most unusual sights and the best symbol of that era.
Naftalan was then a prosperous, lively town, with huge sanatoriums, gardens, treatment rooms and a steady stream of visitors. The oil that heals was its reason for being and its economic engine. Like so many Soviet 'kurorts', it had that half-medical, half-holiday feel, with patients combining treatments with rest, walks in the park and the social life of the spa. Nothing hinted at the crisis that lay ahead.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s hit Naftalan hard. Almost overnight, the flow of patients from across the USSR stopped, and the system that kept the big sanatoriums running fell apart. On top of that crisis, Azerbaijan faced the Nagorno-Karabakh war with Armenia, which displaced hundreds of thousands of people inside the country. Many of those refugees were housed in Naftalan's empty sanatoriums, which for years stopped working as spas and became shelters.
It was a long, hard period. The facilities fell into disrepair, the town lost people and activity, and for a while the oil that heals seemed like a memory from the past. Only once the country stabilised and the situation of the displaced people was gradually resolved, well into the 21st century, could Naftalan begin to recover its original calling as a health town.
The revival came with investment and new resorts. The best known is the Chinar Hotel & Spa, a modern five-star spa hotel that put Naftalan back on the health-tourism map, now aimed not only at patients from the former USSR but also at visitors from Arab countries and the rest of the world. Alongside the modern resorts, Soviet-style sanatoriums are still running, plainer and cheaper, so today the town offers both faces of the spa.
Today Naftalan once again lives off its healing oil, in an interesting mix of tradition and modernity. On one hand, it is still a serious health centre: the sanatoriums and spa hotels offer medical cures with naftalan baths and physiotherapy, supervised by doctors, to treat psoriasis, eczema, joint and rheumatic conditions and other ailments, following the model of the spas of the East. Many patients come back year after year.
On the other hand, in recent decades Naftalan has also become a first-rate tourist curiosity. The idea of bathing in oil draws travellers from all over the world who want a one-of-a-kind experience, even if they are perfectly healthy. The town has made the most of that interest, promoting its oddity as one of Azerbaijan's great unusual attractions, alongside the eternal fire of Yanar Dag and the mud volcanoes of Gobustan.
For travellers, Naftalan is a fascinating stop: a place where the resource that made all of Azerbaijan rich and famous, oil, is used to heal instead of to burn. Sinking into the warm crude, visiting the Crutch Museum and understanding this centuries-old story is a glimpse of an unexpected side of the country. In 'the land of fire', Naftalan shows that oil can also heal, and nowhere else in the world has anything quite like it.
