Sheki Khan's Palace: shebeke glass, frescoes, and how to visit

Most people travel five hours from Baku for a building you can walk through in under an hour, and they leave glad they did. The draw is what the walls and windows hold: thousands of pieces of coloured glass laid into wooden lattice by hand, and rooms painted floor to ceiling with hunts, battles and gardens. Here is what the palace is, when it was built, what it costs, and how to fit it into a trip north.

What is Sheki Khan's Palace?

It is the summer residence of the khans who ruled the Sheki khanate, a two-story building set inside the old Sheki fortress in the northwest of the country. What survives today is a single structure, the one building left from a larger palace complex that once stood here. The khanate grew rich on silk, and that money paid for the decoration: a façade of shebeke glass and an interior covered in frescoes. The fortress is the walled enclosure around it, so the palace is the building and the fortress is the wall, two different things often blurred together.

When was it built?

In the late 18th century. The exact year is disputed, with sources giving dates variously from 1762 to 1797, so it is safest to say "late 18th century" rather than fix a single year. It went up during the period when Sheki's silk trade was at its height, which is why a provincial summer house carries decoration on this scale. The palace was later restored more than once, and conservation work continues, which is part of why interior access is managed so carefully.

Why is it famous?

For two things, both inside the same small building. The first is shebeke: latticed windows where small pieces of coloured glass are held in a carved wooden frame with no nails and no glue, the wood cut and slotted so the pieces lock together. That detail, no nails or glue, is the solid and well-documented fact about the craft. According to local sources the largest window holds several thousand glass pieces per square metre, a figure worth treating as an estimate rather than a measurement. The second is the frescoes: 18th-century wall and ceiling paintings of hunting scenes, battles and flowers that cover nearly every surface of the upper rooms. The palace anchors the UNESCO listing it shares with the Sheki old city around it.

How do you get to Sheki from Baku?

Sheki is about 300 km northwest of Baku, a drive of roughly four to four and a half hours. It is too far for a comfortable day trip, so it works best as an overnight, which is exactly how it sits on our 6-day Azerbaijan cultural tour. The road is good for most of the way and the final approach climbs into the Greater Caucasus foothills, where the air cools and the landscape turns green. Late spring through autumn is the most reliable season for the drive and for the town.

What does it cost and when is it open?

Entry is around 9 AZN for foreign visitors, paid at the gate, with cheaper rates for students and locals and a guide usually included. The palace is commonly open daily from about 09:00 to 18:00, with a midday break when the ticket office may close, so prices and hours should be confirmed locally rather than taken from older pages. Photography of the painted interiors is restricted, and every group goes through with a staff member, which keeps visits to a steady rotation.

What else is nearby?

A great deal, which is the case for visiting Sheki rather than just the palace. The fortress grounds hold centuries-old plane trees and a courtyard pool, and the Sheki old city spreads downhill with its caravanserais, craft workshops and the local halva. A short drive north sits the Church of Kish, a small stone church tied to ancient Caucasian Albania. Together they turn a half-hour palace visit into a full and worthwhile stop on the way through northern Azerbaijan.