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Baku

Baku is a city of contradictions—ancient and ultramodern, nestled between the Caspian Sea and the Absheron Peninsula. Its Old City, a UNESCO-protected maze of medieval streets and caravanserais, sits in the shadow of glass skyscrapers and the futuristic Heydar Aliyev Center. The capital of Azerbaijan pulses with a distinct energy, shaped by centuries of trade, oil wealth, and a culture that bridges East and West. Here, Azerbaijani hospitality and the rhythms of the Caucasus meet 21st-century ambition.

CountryAzerbaijan
RegionBaku
LanguageAZ
CurrencyAZN
Where it is
Azerbaijan · Baku

Roughly where Baku sits.

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From the magazine

What we wrote about Baku

The map tells you where. These pieces tell you when to go, whether the place is for you, and what nobody mentions.

Read the Baku guideBaku is three cities stacked on top of each other and a single well.
01When to go1
In Baku the sea holds out six weeks longer than the air

It rains 225 millimetres a year over 49 days, and in July it does not rain at all. So rain does not decide. Two things do: the wind, which here has its own name, and the temperature of the Caspian, which stretches the good season well into October.

9 min
02Made for you1
Baku for those who travel for twenty-first-century architecture

Few cities have built so much large-format architecture in so little time, and none has it twenty minutes' walk from a twelfth-century wall. The trip works very well if you accept two things: that the pieces are scattered and that several of them read better from a distance than up close.

8 min
03Worth knowing1
Half the world's mud volcanoes are next to Baku

Of the roughly seven hundred known on the planet, some three hundred and fifty are in this country, and a good share of them less than an hour from the capital. They spit not lava but cold mud, and they come out of the same underground that made the city rich.

7 min
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