Best Tourist Attractions in Baku
Azerbaijan’s capital Baku (or even Bakı at Azeri) is your architectural beloved child of Paris and Dubai…albeit with lots of Soviet figures floating half-hidden from the backdrop. Few cities on the planet are shifting in the Caucasus perform East and West blend chaotically or easily. At its center, the Unesco-listed İçəri Şəhər (Old City) lies inside an exotically crenelated arc of this fortress wall. All of this is illuminated pedestrianized streets full of exclusive boutiques and rock mansions. Has turned the city into a crucible of experimentation and a few of the brand new buildings have been masterpieces that were jaw-dropping. Meanwhile, intimate couples canoodle their way round coastal parks and hold control around the Caspian-front bulvar (promenade), in which greens and opal blues produce a mockery of all Baku’s desert-ringed site.
Heydar Aliyev Center
Vast this Zaha Hadid building and initial is a royal statement of fluid architecture forming waves and also waves that seem to melt together. The pleasure that is real photographing and is only imagining the extraordinary exterior from ever-changing angles. The interior host’s concerts and exhibition spaces, also are equally impressive, too. The most useful part of this permanent collection treasures of Azerbaijan’, which walks you through the country’s cultural highlights.
Maiden’s Tower
This 29m rock tower is the foremost icon that is ancient of Baku, with rooftop views surveying Baku Bay and the Old City. Millennia older, its construction date could be the main topic of debate, though much of this structure that is present appears to be the 12th century. The Azeri title, Qız Qalası, is often rendered’Maiden’s Tower’ from English, leading to a lot of patently fictitious fairy tales. A variety of models are considered from the imaginative little multimedia setups that decorate many floors of the tower’s interior.
Yarat Contemporary Art Centre
Yarat means to create a soul that is in considerable evidence in the many installations of this center that do not shy away from comment. The cafe is motivated, place up a repurposed metal-press rescued as part of their revamping of this former naval-factory construction.
Flame Towers
Completed in 2012, the architectural signature of Baku is formed by this trio of sinuous Sky Scrapers. The 3 towers range from 28 to 3 3 stories tremendous they’re most impressive seen from a considerable distance, particularly at night once they shape a huge palette for a show that interchanges between fire impacts, pouring the flag and water.
Palace of the Shirvanshahs
This fabulous confection of walls and domes was the seat of northeastern Azerbaijan’s ruling dynasty throughout the dark ages. Mostly 15th century, it had been painstakingly (over)revived in 2003 with artifacts adding interest plus one or two entertaining audio-visual surprises.
Fountains Square
Ever-popular with strollers creates the ordinary focus of Central Baku. The fountains to include one wrapped with spheres that are silvered that are gleaming giving reflections of stone facades and these trees.
MOMA
As you consider the wide selection of mindbending, predominantly post-1980 Azerbaijani art, in many which you may recline on beanbag sofas this joyous tailor-made gallery uses struts and tubing to create a variety of intimate spaces. Upstairs appear, along with a Dalí three Picassos and a Chagal.
Carpet Museum
From historical flatweaves to modernist picture-rugs, this museum that is tailor-made explains and exhibits a great group of Azerbaijani rugs. Austrian architect Franz Janz, designed like a roll of carpeting placed in a 2014 building it.
Şəhidlər Xiyabanı
The most noteworthy quality of the ‘Highland Park’ that stretches south from the Flame Towers is this sombre Collection of tomb memorials — Bakuvian victims of the Red Army’s 1990 attack, alongside ancient martyrs of the Karabakh conflict.
Historical Museum
Exhibits on Azerbaijan’s history and civilization might miss out on the century here and there, but there’s plenty of if you are curious to fill several hours. Otherwise, it is still worth a brief trot through to admire the opulent 1895–1901 mansion of HZ Tağiyev, one of Baku’s biggest late-19th-century petroleum barons.
Bibi-Heybət Mosque
Worth a quick stop on the way to Qobustan, this 1998 mosque substituted a 13th century first commissioned by the Soviets’for road widening’ in September 1937. The inside is striking and the rear terrace has viewpoints across an interface, 5km south of fundamental Baku.
Caspian Waterfront Mall
Designed just like a flower but five stories high and manufactured from glass and steel, this project has been since 2007 under construction and was originally conceived as a congress center. In actuality, as it finally opens (anticipated for 2020) it is very likely to be considered a shopping mall and entertainment center.
Tahir Salahov House Museum
Tahir Salahov is most likely the greatest living painters, best known for bringing deep strength into Soviet Realism of Azerbaijan. There is added interest from some naive Stalin-era rugs plus a fascinating variety of photos of the artist meeting everyone, although the Baku house has a selection of his own works.
Crescent Moon Building
Several glistening towers are under construction including an incredible architectural attention-grabber in the shape of a crescent moon, at Crescent Bay contrary Port Baku. That building remains pristine — the building has been allegedly stalled due to difficulties with the upper curve — but once finished it needs to be another wonderful architectural heritage for the town.
State Art Museum
Housed in two century-old oil-boom mansions, Baku’s top collection of classical art ranges from 17thcentury French landscapes into Meiji-era Japanese ceramics into Russian portraits and also a fine array of Azerbaijani pictures.
Cümə Mosque
Though it appears squat the inside of this previous City’s carving-festooned’ Friday’ mosque contains beautifully patterned vaults across a central dome and chandelier. Albeit built on the site of a 12th century original with a minaret the present structure dates from 1899.
Təzə Pir Mosque
The grandest historic mosque in central Baku, Təzə Pir was built between 1903 and 1914, financed by a female philanthropist. More-recent renovations added gilding to the minaret tips and rock cladding to the nearby properties, which house the most Centre for Islam in the Caucasus.
Dom Soviet
The most striking Soviet-era construction of Baku is a colossal stone structure fronted by a remarkable set of stone arches that are layered and topped by rows of mini obelisks.
Kiçik Qalart
No, it’s perhaps not Lenin. This really colossal Soviet-era statue actually honours Nәriman Nәrimanov, Azerbaijan’s first communist-era leader.
Nizami Literature Museum
The attraction of the museum for most traffic is that the western facade of this building it inhabits: a nice structure with photogenic markets set with statues of the literary greats of the nation.
Medieval Market Square
Directly in front of the Maiden’s Tower are various archaeological diggings at exactly what some believe to be the site where Jesus’ disciple St Bartholomew was martyred. Place straight back is somewhat small, the former market-square area currently utilized as an exhibition for an assortment of historical stones.
National Flag Square
In September 2010, the planet’s tallest flagpole (then 162m) was installed in the Bulvar’s southern tip. The entire record was later snatched by Dushanbe, Tajikistan Riyadh. Back in 2018 Baku’s pole has been removed, however, there are rumors that it is going to return taller than in 2020. It is possible to walk around, however, maybe not climb the huge base-mound, along with also the entire area is agreeable for gentle bicycle rides — leasing representatives available close to the Caspian Waterfront Mall.
Bahram Gur Statue
This powerful 1958 fountain-statue depicts a mythical Azerbaijani hero employing a scimitar to slay a ‘dragon’. In a pool, the lower Funicular channel generates a foreground for photos of their Flame Towers at dusk when the lights have begun to play.
Museum of Miniature Books
One of the charming oddities, this little museum of Baku gift ideas novels which are so small you’d want a magnifying glass to see the print. The very fact that so many minuscule books have been published at all is a jolt, and also amassing the thousands displayed here has been a lifetime’s enthusiasm for collector Zərifə Salahova who began the area in 2002.