Azerbaijan

Baku

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  • Population:~2.3M
  • Elevation:-23 m
  • Timezone:Azerbaijan Time (AZT, UTC+4)
  • IATA:GYD

Overview

Baku is Azerbaijan's capital on the Caspian Sea and, at 28 metres below sea level, the lowest-lying capital in the world.

Travel

Baku stands on the Absheron peninsula on the western shore of the Caspian, the largest inland body of water on earth, and at 28 metres below sea level it is the lowest-lying capital in the world. Locally it is the city of winds, and specifically of two: the warm Gilavar that arrives from the south and the cooler Khazri from the north, both frequent enough to have names and to settle what a given day will feel like. The city reads as a set of layers stacked within a few streets of one another, each from a different century and each still in daily use rather than roped off. Almost everything a first-time visitor comes for sits inside that band along the shore, or a half-day's drive beyond it on the peninsula.

Baku's medieval core is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, ringed by twelfth-century walls and still home to a few thousand residents, which is what keeps it from feeling like an exhibit: the alleys hold galleries, tea rooms, restaurants and rooftop bars alongside the monuments. The Maiden Tower anchors the quarter and remains genuinely unexplained — neither its date of construction nor its original purpose is settled, and the competing theories are half the pleasure of standing under it. The fifteenth-century Shirvanshahs' Palace, the other UNESCO-cited monument here, is a whole complex rather than a single building, taking in a mosque, a mausoleum, a hammam, a divankhana, gates and a reservoir. Two smaller collections reward the detour: the Museum of Miniature Books, whose holdings include the smallest book in the world at two millimetres square, and the Marionette Theatre, which stages Uzeyir Hajibeyli's Leyli and Majnun and The Cloth Peddler.

Frequently asked questions

Yes — at 28 metres below sea level it is the lowest-lying capital city in the world, a consequence of standing on the Absheron peninsula beside the Caspian, which is an inland sea with no outlet to the ocean and a surface well below the global one.

Diplomatic missions in Baku

3 embassies based in this city, grouped by region.

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