Guides to the places worth your time, from the UNESCO Old City of Baku and the Gobustan petroglyphs to Sheki's khan palace, the burning hillside of Yanar Dag, and alpine Lake Goygol. Drive times, tickets, and the right season for each.
AbsheronBaku (Surakhani)
The Ateshgah Fire Temple is a castle-like pentagonal complex in Surakhani on the outskirts of Baku, built around a former natural gas vent and used through the 17th and 18th centuries by Hindu, Sikh and Zoroastrian worsh
BakuBaku
Baku Boulevard is a seafront promenade along the Caspian Sea in central Baku, founded in 1909. The national park runs about 16.7 km over roughly 215 hectares and links the city centre with the bay. Along it sit the Littl
ShekiKish village
The Church of Kish is a small round-apse stone church in Kish village, about 5 km north of Sheki in northern Azerbaijan, tied to Caucasian Albania, an ancient Christian kingdom of the eastern Caucasus. The standing build
ShamakhiMaraza
Diri Baba Mausoleum is a two-story rock-cut mausoleum-mosque set into a cliff at Maraza, in Azerbaijan's Gobustan district, on the Baku to Shamakhi road. A dated fragment records its construction in 1402 by order of Shir
GanjaGanja
Ganja is Azerbaijan's second city, in the west of the country about 360 km from Baku. Its landmarks include the Shah Abbas (Juma) Mosque of 1606, the Bottle House clad in 48,000 glass bottles, and the 450-hectare Heydar
GobustanGobustan town
The Gobustan mud volcanoes are a field of small geological cones near Gobustan in Azerbaijan, about 70 km south of Baku, that erupt cold grey mud, water and methane rather than lava. The Dashgil field is the cluster most
GobustanGobustan town
Gobustan Rock Art is an open-air reserve about 64 km south of Baku holding more than 6,000 prehistoric engravings cut into a boulder-strewn plateau over tens of thousands of years. The carvings show hunters, dancers, ree
BakuBaku
Icherisheher is the walled historic core of Baku, Azerbaijan, a residential quarter of about 22 hectares ringed by 11th to 12th-century fortifications. It holds the Maiden Tower and the 15th-century Palace of the Shirvan
ShamakhiShamakhi
The Juma Mosque of Shamakhi is a working Friday mosque in northern Azerbaijan, founded in 743 to 744 AD under the Umayyads. The oldest mosque in Azerbaijan and among the oldest in the Caucasus, it has an unusual plan of
OghuzOghuz
Khalkhal Waterfall is a forested mountain cascade near Xalxal village in the Oghuz district of north-western Azerbaijan, about 15 km north-east of Oghuz town on the southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus. It is reached
GanjaGanja
Lake Goygol (Göygöl, meaning blue lake) is an alpine lake in the Lesser Caucasus near Ganja, formed on 30 September 1139 when the Ganja earthquake collapsed part of Mount Kapaz and dammed a river. It sits at about 1,553
NaftalanNaftalan
Naftalan is a small city in western Azerbaijan built around a rare grade of medicinal crude oil rich in naphthenic hydrocarbons. Bathers sit for about ten minutes in the heated brown oil under sanatorium supervision. The
GanjaGanja
The Nizami Ganjavi Mausoleum is a roughly 20-metre cylindrical red-granite tower on the eastern approach to Ganja, Azerbaijan, marking the presumed grave of the 12th-century poet Nizami Ganjavi (born about 1141, died 120
ShekiSheki
Sheki Khan's Palace is a late-18th-century two-story summer residence of the Sheki khans in northwestern Azerbaijan, the only surviving building of a larger palace complex. It is known for its shebeke windows, latticed s
ShekiSheki
Sheki is a historic silk-trade town in northwest Azerbaijan, in the southern foothills of the Greater Caucasus about 300 km from Baku. Its Yukhari Bash old quarter, fortress, caravanserais and Khan's Palace were inscribe
AbsheronBaku
Yanar Dag is a natural gas fire on a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula about 25 km from Baku, where methane seeps up through porous sandstone and burns continuously in the open air. The flame runs along the foot of the
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