Palace of the Shirvanshahs: the 15th-century royal complex in Baku's Old City

Most people meet this building as a line on a list. It is the second ticket inside Baku's walled quarter after the Maiden Tower, and it is usually described in one sentence as a 15th-century palace. That undersells it in one specific way: it is not a palace, it is six or seven buildings stepped down a hillside, and the two of them that carry dates carry them in stone. Here is what each part is, which claims about it are attested and which are estimates, and what a visit actually involves.

What is the Palace of the Shirvanshahs?

The Shirvanshahs ruled Shirvan, the region north and west of the Absheron peninsula, for centuries from Shamakhi. In the 15th century Shamakhi was finally given up as the capital in favour of Baku, and this complex is what they built on the highest point of the walled town. ICOMOS, in its evaluation of the World Heritage nomination, describes it as extending over three superimposed terraces, and that is the clearest way to hold it in your head.

The upper terrace has the residence itself, a two-storey block around a courtyard, and the divankhana, an octagonal stone rotunda standing free on a plinth in the middle of its own arcaded court. The middle level holds the burial vault of the Shirvanshahs and the palace mosque with its minaret. Below them again is the bathhouse, which nobody knew was there until 1939, when excavation in a vineyard turned it up and it was conserved at its lower wall courses so you read it as a plan rather than a building. The mausoleum of Seyid Yahya Bakuvi, court scholar to Khalilullah I, stands in what was once the palace cemetery, and the Murad Gate stands apart from all of it.

The palace sits at the top of the hill, which is why ICOMOS notes it is visible from the sea and from the heights around the city. Walk the Old City for an hour and you keep catching its domes above the rooflines.

Which dates are inscribed, and which are estimates

Two buildings here carry dated inscriptions, and it is worth knowing which two, because published dates for the rest vary a great deal.

The portal of the burial vault carries the year AH 839, which falls in 1435 or 1436, and names Khalilullah I, who built it for his mother and his son. The minaret of the palace mosque carries AH 845, 1441 or 1442, in the name of the same ruler. ICOMOS gives the mosque itself as 1441 and the vault as 1434 to 1435, which is close enough to the inscriptions to be the same story told with a different conversion.

The main palace building carries no dated construction inscription at all. Neither does the divankhana: the text over its entrance is a passage from the Qur'an, not a foundation date. So the residence and the divankhana are dated by style and by association with the reigns of Khalilullah I and his son Farrukh Yasar, who was killed in battle in 1501. Some of the divankhana's carving was never finished, and that unfinished state is usually read as the Safavid conquest of that year arriving before the masons did. Treat any single year you see attached to the divankhana as somebody's estimate rather than a reading off the wall.

The one date that is not 15th century belongs to the Murad Gate, inscribed AH 994, which is 1585 or 1586, in the name of Sultan Murad. It is the only 16th-century building in the complex, and it appears to have been the entrance to something that was either never built or has not survived.

The burial vault was excavated in 1945 and 1946. Seven burials were found, and the grave goods went to the Museum of History of Azerbaijan.

Is it a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

It is part of one, which is a distinction worth keeping. UNESCO inscribed the property in 2000 under the name Walled City of Baku with the Shirvanshah's Palace and Maiden Tower, on criterion (iv). The property covers 21.5 hectares with a 12-hectare buffer zone, and it was Azerbaijan's first entry on the World Heritage List. The palace is named in the property title, but what is inscribed is the walled city as a whole.

The property spent six years on the List of World Heritage in Danger, from 2003 to 2009, and came off it once conservation work satisfied the committee. Since 2007 the site has been the responsibility of the Icherisheher State Historical-Architectural Reserve Administration, which is the body that runs the palace as a museum today.

Why the palace is on the VIVANT itinerary

TBS began the second season of the drama VIVANT on 26 July 2026. Filming in Azerbaijan ran from August to the end of October 2025 in Baku, Sumgayit, Ganja, Nakhchivan, Shamakhi, Gabala, Sheki and Guba, with Baku Media Center handling permits, logistics and coordination, as reported by Report.az on 15 November 2025 and by the state news agency AZERTAC the same day. That report names cities and districts. It names no site inside any of them.

Hankyu Travel's Japanese itinerary goes further and labels six sites as filming locations on its own authority, numbered ロケ地1 to ロケ地6. The Palace of the Shirvanshahs is the sixth. That page describes the trip as a tie-up with the drama, names no licensor for the labels, and does not say what was filmed at any of the six. A separate piece of Japanese expert commentary, Sasaki Masaaki writing for Yahoo News Japan on 24 July 2026, reports eight locations inside the country and names Sheki; it does not name the palace either.

So the honest position is that a Japanese tour company has put this building on a list of filming locations on its own authority, and nobody has confirmed a scene here. That takes nothing away from the building. It has been the anchor of the Old City for six centuries and it was worth an hour and a half before any of this. Where the named places sit relative to each other is set out on our VIVANT in Azerbaijan page.

What it costs and how long to give it

The palace is ticketed, separately from the Maiden Tower, and paid on site. The reserve publishes both the hours and the price list on its own site, and we checked them on 27 July 2026: open every day from 10:00 to 19:00, admission 24 AZN for a foreign adult, 12 AZN for a foreign child aged 5 to 17, and 7 AZN for a local adult, covering the palace and the treasury together. Older listings still give 10:00 to 18:00, which is where the figure on most guide pages comes from, so if you are arriving near closing check the reserve's page rather than a blog, ours included. Walking the Old City around it costs nothing.

Give it about an hour and a half if you want all three terraces, the inside of the divankhana, the vault and the mosque. An hour covers the upper courtyard and the residence. The terraces mean stairs and uneven stone throughout, which is worth knowing in advance if anyone in the group is unsteady on their feet, and the upper courtyard has almost no shade in July and August.

How do you get there?

It is in the middle of Baku, so most people walk in through one of the Old City gates and up. The İçərişəhər metro station is at the main gate below the quarter, one stop from the seafront at Sahil, and the walk from there is uphill through the lanes. Our guide to riding the Baku Metro covers the fare and the ticketing. A car is no help: the lanes inside the walls are narrow, largely residential and restricted for parking.

The palace is one of the stops on our 6-day Azerbaijan cultural tour, which pairs Baku with Shamakhi and Sheki on the road northwest.

Disclosure

Birtour is not affiliated with TBS, with the VIVANT production committee, or with the travel companies selling packaged VIVANT departures. We are a destination management company based in Baku. This page describes the palace complex itself and what is known about its dating.