Baku Old City (Icherisheher): visitor guide

What to expect at the Old City of Baku

Baku's Old City (Icheri Sheher, 'Inner City') is the best-preserved historic city centre in the South Caucasus, a walled medieval urban fabric of narrow stone lanes, caravanserais, mosques, bathhouses and merchant houses enclosed within double walls of local limestone, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. The Old City occupies a small rocky peninsula that juts into Baku Bay, its medieval walls rising directly from the Caspian shoreline on three sides and enclosing about 22 hectares of historic fabric where about 1,000 people still live today in buildings ranging from medieval to Soviet-era renovations.

Maiden Tower

Besides, the Maiden Tower (Qız Qalası) is the Old City's most enigmatic monument, an 8-storey cylindrical tower of dressed limestone rising 29 metres above the southeastern corner of the Old City, its unusual D-shaped plan (the flat side facing inland, the curved side facing the sea) and its undetermined original function making it one of the most debated historical structures in the Caucasus. Dendrochronological analysis suggests the lower sections date to at least the 6th century BC.

This makes it among the oldest structures in Azerbaijan, though its current form reflects construction and modification across many centuries. The interior is accessible (entry about 10 AZN) with exhibits on each floor about Baku's history and the tower's various interpretations, a fire temple, a Zoroastrian observatory, a lighthouse, a medieval defensive tower.

Palace of the Shirvanshahs

Also, the Palace of the Shirvanshahs (15th century, entry about 15 AZN) is the best medieval Islamic monument in Azerbaijan, a complex of palace buildings, a mosque, a bathhouse, a mausoleum and a dervish lodge occupying the highest point of the Old City. In fact, the main palace building has an elegant facade of carved limestone with muqarnas (geometric stalactite) decorations above the entrance portal. Also, the complex as a whole gives the clearest picture of medieval Azerbaijani court architecture available anywhere. The mausoleum of the Shirvanshahs, with its carved inscriptions and star-patterned stone dome, is the most delicately worked single structure in the complex.

Caravanserais

The caravanserais within the Old City walls, the Multani Caravanserai and the Bukhara Caravanserai, originally built for Indian and Central Asian merchants trading through Baku on the Silk Road, are now occupied by craft shops and restaurants but retain their original courtyard plan and two-storey arcaded facades. Moreover, the Old City's lanes are lined with carpet shops, souvenir stores, small restaurants and tea houses. Also, the commercial atmosphere is continuous with the medieval function of the space as a trading district. Even so, the goods have changed considerably since the Silk Road period.

The best time to visit the Old City is early morning (before 9 AM) when the lanes are quiet and the light is soft on the limestone walls, or evening (after 6 PM) when the walls are lit and the temperatures are comfortable. Besides, the Old City walls themselves are walkable in sections, and the exterior of the walls along the Caspian side gives the best views across the bay toward the Absheron Peninsula. Also, the main entrance to the Old City from the modern city is through the northern gate adjacent to the Icheri Sheher metro station (Line 1 and 2 intersection).

Worth knowing

The Old City sits among Baku's late 19th-century oil boom architecture, the 'Black Gold' period when Azerbaijani petroleum millionaires built eclectic mansions in French, Italian and Moorish styles along the streets immediately outside the walls. Moreover, the Istiglaliyyat Street and the streets around Fountain Square (İstiqlaliyyət küçəsi) contain some of the best examples of this oil-boom architectural heritage and make the Old City visit naturally extendable into the late 19th-century city around it.