Baku in a day: what to see

The Old City, Icherisheher, begins the day: enclosed within medieval walls, it hosts the Maiden Tower, the city's symbolic monument with origins still debated among historians, and the Shirvanshah Palace, the fifteenth-century royal residence.

Walking through the cobbled streets of the old city you encounter carpet shops and caravanserais transformed into restaurants, testimony to Baku's past as a stop on the Silk Road.

For lunch, one of the restaurants of the old city offers plov and the other dishes of Azerbaijani cuisine, halfway between Persian and Caucasian influences.

The Flame Towers, the three skyscrapers shaped like flames that dominate the city skyline, light up in the evening with a luminous animation visible from much of Baku.

The Heydar Aliyev Center, the building with undulating forms signed by Zaha Hadid, instead became the symbol of contemporary Azerbaijani architecture.

As evening falls, the Baku Boulevard, the long promenade along the Caspian Sea waterfront, remains the most direct way to close the day among fountains, parks, and the view of the illuminated Flame Towers.

Old City, Maiden Tower, and Palace of the Shirvanshahs are enough to show Baku's medieval soul, while an afternoon choice between the Flame Towers and the Heydar Aliyev Centre brings the monumental or contemporary architectural side.

The Carpet Museum, shaped like a rolled carpet, and a trip to the mud volcanoes of the Absheron Peninsula remain chapters for a second journey. Watching the Flame Towers light up like fire above the Old City as dusk falls remains Baku's most memorable detail.