A Guide to the Old City of Baku, Azerbaijan, Baku, Azerbaijan

Baku is a wonderful, eclectic city filled with such a wide array of architectural styles it will make your head spin. On paper, it seems as if the Old City’s stone buildings, the European Rococo properties and the tall modern skyscrapers wouldn’t blend well. In fact, it is this contrast of styles that gives the city so much character. Each of these neighbourhoods contains a treasure trove of sites that are fun to discover.

We’ll begin by taking you through Baku’s Old City. In the next post, we’ll explore the modern faces of Baku.

This area has been inhabited since Paleolithic humans, but it was in the first century AD that a fortified port city was established. It changed hands a few times before it came under the Shirvanshahs Dynasty in the 11th and 12th centuries. The Shirvanshahs ruled parts of Azerbaijan, called Shrivani, from 861 until 1538. Their capital was in the town of Shemakhy, over 350 km away. In the 12th century, an earthquake destroyed it, forcing their capital to be moved to Baku. In addition to destroying the buildings, the earthquake resulted in the deaths of many, including the wife and children of the ruling Shah.

It was the Shirvanshahs that brought Baku to its full potential. Under their rule, the port on the Caspian Sea prospered and the city soon filled with palaces, caravanserais, bathhouses and mosques. They remained in charge until the 1500s when they were defeated by a Persian Dynasty. Control of the city then went back and forth between the Ottoman and Persian Empires. In the early 1800s, it became a protectorate of the Russian Empire and then fell under the control of the Soviet Union until 1991. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).