Baku for first-time visitors: the Old City, the oil and the towers, the Caspian promenade, what to eat, how many days and the visa

You arrive in Baku at night, almost always, and the first thing you see from the taxi is the three flame-shaped towers with lights running up their façades; in the morning, from the hotel, you see the sea, which is the Caspian, and a low city of sand-coloured stone with a walled enclosure in the middle. That is the city: two million people, a 12th-century Old City that is a World Heritage site, a city of 1900 built with the money of the world's first oil, with carved stone mansions and boulevards, and a city of this century, of towers, Zaha Hadid buildings and new promenades, set side by side without mixing. It is safe, cheap, good for walking and surprises almost everyone. This guide tells what to see in each part, what to eat, how to get around, how many days you need, the visa and the day trips.

The Old City

Icherisheher, the inner city, is a walled enclosure of 22 hectares in the centre, with streets that rise and fall, stone houses with wooden balconies, caravanserais, baths and mosques, which entered the UNESCO list in 2000 and spent six years on the danger list until it was put right. The two things to see are the Maiden Tower, a 28-metre stone cylinder of the 12th century on an older base, which nobody knows the purpose of, with legends of princesses and a view from the top, and the palace of the Shirvanshahs, the kings of Shirvan who settled here in the 15th century, with its mosque, mausoleum, bathhouse and audience hall of pale stone, seen in an hour and a half. The rest is walking: the caravanserais turned into restaurants, the studio of Ali Shamsi, the painter who keeps his house open, the carpet shops, and the Museum of Miniature Books, which is what it sounds like. It is small and covered in a morning, with a return at dusk for the lit-up walls.

The oil city and today's city

Outside the walls begins the Baku of 1900, when the Absheron wells produced half the world's oil and the Nobels, the Rothschilds and local barons like Taghiyev raised carved stone mansions in the streets between Fountains Square and Nizami street, which is the area for strolling, cafés and shops; the History Museum, in Taghiyev's house, shows how they lived. This century's Baku is the three Flame Towers of 2012, up to 182 metres, with the funicular that climbs to their foot and the view of the bay, the Heydar Aliyev Center by Zaha Hadid, from 2012, a white wave without a single straight corner to be seen outside and in, and the seafront promenade, the Bulvar, begun in 1909 and today stretching several kilometres along the shore with parks, the Carpet Museum shaped like a rolled carpet and the big wheel. In between, the Philharmonic Park, with its fountain and its 1912 building copied from a Monte Carlo casino, for sitting down.

What to eat

The cooking is Persian and Turkish at once, with the Caspian beside it: plov, saffron rice with a crust, with lamb, chestnuts and dried fruit, ordered in the Old City restaurants and eaten slowly; dolma, vine leaves or vegetables stuffed with meat, on the UNESCO list since 2017; qutab, the thin pastry with herbs or meat bought on the street; lamb and sturgeon kebab; piti, the clay-pot stew that comes from Sheki; and for dessert, baklava and shekerbura with black tea in the waisted armudu glass and a spoonful of quince or walnut jam. To see what is eaten and buy cheese, saffron and dried fruit, the Yashil Bazaar, the green market, two metro stops away.

Day trips from the city

The Absheron peninsula holds half of what explains Azerbaijan: the Ateshgah fire temple, the enclosure Hindu merchants raised over the natural flames, and Yanardag, the hillside that has burned for decades, are done in half a day; Gobustan, with the ten-thousand-year-old petroglyphs and the mud volcanoes, in another half day to the south; and with more time, Sheki and the mountains, four hours away, or Quba and Khinalig, to the north, which are another trip.

The practical side

Citizens of most of Europe need an e-visa, applied for online before the trip on the government's official portal and issued within a few days; you cannot enter with a Karabakh stamp, but Armenian stamps are fine. The currency is the manat, changed at any exchange office in the centre, and cash machines work; the metro, with the rechargeable card, is cheap and reaches everything, and taxis are ordered by app. Azerbaijani and Russian are spoken, and English in hotels and restaurants in the centre. The best time is April to June and September to October; summer is hot and windy, winter cold and damp. Three days cover the city and the peninsula; five, Gobustan and a night away.

Frequently asked questions