I didn't expect to like Baku this much. And I definitely didn't expect the moment that changed my mind to happen at a burning hillside at 10PM on a Tuesday.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The H1 airport bus dropped me on the Baku Boulevard at sunset. One manat. Sixty cents. I stepped off the bus and looked up.
Three enormous towers — shaped like flames, covered in LED panels — were beginning their nightly performance against the darkening sky. Blue to orange to red, the colors rippled across the facades like actual fire. Behind me, the Caspian Sea stretched flat to the horizon, catching the last light.
And directly ahead, through a gap in the modern waterfront, I could see the stone walls of Icherisheher — the Old City — still standing after 800 years, lit by amber lamps.
Futuristic towers. Medieval fortress. Infinite sea. All in one frame.
I stood there long enough that a local gentleman — impeccably dressed, white hair, armudu tea glass in hand — paused beside me and said, in careful English, "She is beautiful, yes? She is always beautiful."
I spent the first morning inside the Old City, Icherisheher. The UNESCO-listed walled quarter is compact enough to cover in two hours, but I kept stopping.
The alleys are narrow. Stone on both sides, smoothed by centuries of footsteps. Carpet shops spill their wares onto the pavement — silk Azerbaijani carpets in deep reds and blues, draped over railings and hung from walls. The carpet sellers here don't so much sell as perform. Tea appears. Stories are told. You're shown twelve carpets before you realize you've been sitting for an hour.
I bought nothing. But I drank three cups of tea.
The Maiden Tower (15 AZN entry) is the old city's landmark — a 12th-century cylindrical tower with eight floors of exhibits and a rooftop view that puts the whole of Baku in context. The palace complex, the Caspian, the modern skyline — all visible from 28 meters up.
No one knows why it's called the Maiden Tower. The most popular legend involves a princess who threw herself from the top to avoid an arranged marriage. But historians argue it was a fire temple, a watchtower, an astronomical observatory. The mystery is part of the charm.
The Heydar Aliyev Center sits several kilometers north of the old city, and the architecture is the opposite of everything medieval. Designed by Zaha Hadid, the building flows and curves without a single straight line. White panels ripple like fabric frozen mid-wave. The plaza in front creates a sense of infinite space.
Entry: 15 AZN. The exhibitions inside rotate, but the building itself is the exhibit. I spent twenty minutes just walking around the exterior, watching the curves shift perspective with every step.
The contrast with the Old City — stone, angular, fortified — is so stark it almost feels intentional. As if Baku is saying: we were this, and now we're also this.
And then came the night that changed my trip.
Yanar Dag — the Burning Mountain — is 25km north of Baku. A hillside that has been continuously on fire for at least 65 years, fed by natural gas seeping through sandstone.
During the day, it's a modest attraction. A fence, a viewing area, flames about 10 meters wide and 1 meter high licking along the hillside. Entry: 9 AZN.
But at night.
I arrived at 9:30PM. The parking lot had maybe six other cars. The path to the viewing area was lit only by the fire itself. And when I turned the corner and saw it — a wall of flame dancing against black rock, under a sky full of stars, with no other light source anywhere — something shifted.
Fire is different at night. Primal. The flames cast moving shadows on the rock. The heat was palpable from 20 meters. And the silence — no crackling like a campfire, just a steady, low roar, like breathing — made it feel ancient and alive.
Azerbaijan has been called the "Land of Fire" since antiquity. Zoroastrian fire worshippers built temples here (the Ateshgah Fire Temple, 4 AZN, is nearby and worth seeing). The national flag has a flame on it. The Flame Towers carry the metaphor into the sky.
But standing at Yanar Dag in the dark, I understood it wasn't a metaphor. The land literally burns. It always has. The Azerbaijani relationship with fire isn't symbolic — it's geological.
The next day, I hired a driver (80 AZN for the full day) and went to Gobustan, 65km south.
Azerbaijan has roughly 350 mud volcanoes — more than any other country on Earth. The ones near Gobustan sit in a barren, lunar landscape. Grey mud pools bubble and occasionally belch. Some are small enough to touch (warm, grey, oddly satisfying); others erupt periodically to heights of 15 meters.
It felt like another planet. A Star Wars set. A place that shouldn't exist but stubbornly does.
Nearby, the Gobustan Rock Art (UNESCO, 5 AZN entry) has 6,000+ prehistoric petroglyphs — hunters, boats, dancers — carved between 5,000 and 40,000 years ago. There's a petroglyph of a bull that Thor Heyerdahl believed was connected to Scandinavian rock art, suggesting ancient maritime connections.
I'll admit I was skeptical about combining "mud" and "ancient rock art" into a day trip. I was wrong. The landscape is haunting, the rock art is genuinely impressive, and the mud volcanoes are unlike anything I've seen anywhere.
My last evening in Baku, I walked the full 6km of Baku Boulevard — the Caspian promenade. Electric scooters (1 AZN to start, 0.30 AZN/minute) available if walking isn't your thing.
The Carpet Museum (shaped like a giant rolled carpet, because why not) glowed on one side. The Baku Eye (Ferris wheel, 5 AZN) turned slowly against the dark. Families strolled. Couples sat on benches overlooking the sea. The Flame Towers, reflected in the Caspian, completed the scene.
A tea vendor was doing brisk business from a cart. I bought a glass — 2 AZN — and sat on a bench with half of Baku.
The elderly gentleman from my first night happened to walk past again. Or maybe it was a different elderly gentleman. In Baku, they all seem to carry an armudu glass and an unshakeable conviction that their city is the most beautiful in the world.
Maybe they're right.
For more on this destination, read our The Complete Guide to Baku: Where Ancient Flames Meet Futuristic Architecture.
For more on this destination, read our Meet Nigar: A Baku Local Shares Her City's Best-Kept Secrets.
