Baku is not a city I expected much from. While Armenia and Georgia have been on my list for some time, I candidly was not all that cognizant of Azerbaijan until it made its way onto the F1 calendar – the hallmark of any country aspiring to transition from Third World to Developing Nation status. I’ll admit, however, that I was totally wrong to assume that this Islamic petrostate would be as soulless as many of its counterparts. For while Baku would have rivalled any of them in terms of cleanliness and safety, my three days here were far more fascinating and culturally enriching.
As with many of the countries that sit between the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Azerbaijan is a wonderful amalgam of different cultural influences: Persian, Ottoman, Russian and, I’m proud to say, a little British thrown in there. Stepping out of the airport to torrential downpour and a fleet of London cabs lined up outside – this is actually how they refer to them in the city – I had to double check whether the flight hadn’t been sent back home. Add to this ATM booths modelled off red telephone boxes and UK plug sockets in my hotel and the illusion was very nearly complete. I’m glad to see we still have a bit of cachet in certain parts of the world. Of course, I’d rather it was amongst the Commonwealth or frankly Britain itself rather than corrupt autocracies, but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.
It is from Azerbaijan’s first major influence – Persia and its former religion of Zoroastrianism – that it assumed the soubriquet “The Land of Fire”. The symbolism is preponderant throughout Baku, best encapsulated by the Flame Towers complex that dominates its skyline. I don’t know whether it’s a male impulse or whether my mum’s mysticism is starting to rub off on me, but I just couldn’t get enough of the fire imagery. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to venture outside the capital to see some of the ancient Zoroastrian sites, such as Yanar Dag. However, the Old City, where I spent considerable time, provides a wonderful window into Azerbaijan’s Persian roots. Ensconced within towering medieval walls, it teems with narrow alleyways that were utterly delightful to explore. There are some specific points of interest like the Shirvanshah’s Palace and Maiden Tower that you can visit. Honestly, though, I didn’t get much out of going inside them and thought they were best enjoyed in the background.
Step outside the citadel and we move forward chronologically through Baku’s history. Russian architectural influence can be seen across the city, both Tsarist and Soviet. The oil boom of the late nineteenth century ushered in unprecedented prosperity and, concomitantly, a wholesale reimagining of the built environment. Oil barons lavished vast sums on eclectic building projects, hiring European architects who drew on many of the fashionable motifs of the day. This transitioned to Soviet style as the twentieth century progressed – far less dominant than in other parts of the former Union, and many of the more brutalist structures have since been razed. What’s left are predominantly the more tasteful structures that better blend into the cityscape, drawing on Greco-Roman and Islamic influences in roughly equal measure. Perhaps fittingly, the best-preserved vestige of Soviet influence here is the underground metro system. As with all great former Soviet cities, Baku’s metro stations boast beautiful mosaics, with Nizami being a personal favourite. I wouldn’t credit communism with giving the world much to be thankful for, but on this my native London would do well to draw some inspiration.
Moving further out, we see modern Baku at its most confident – be it the glitzy seaside promenade that feels straight out of Dubai, or the iconic Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre perched in the Narimanov district to the north. The latter is an extraordinary piece of architecture, though I was less keen on the art inside. Also worth your time is the Carpet Museum, housed in a building fittingly shaped like a rolled carpet. Three floors take you through the history of Azerbaijani carpet-making and for about ten quid you can get an English-speaking guide, which really brings it to life. I can’t say I arrived with any great fascination for the subject, yet left with a considerably greater appreciation for how onerous and sophisticated the craft once was. The modern section on the top floor had some eccentric contemporary designs that were genuinely cool. These monuments to culture and modernity, many of which draw on the country’s rich historical tradition, are symptomatic of a nation proud of its heritage but increasingly assured in its forward-looking posture.
And I think on this confidence point it is worth drilling down on why – pun very much intended. Azerbaijan’s second wave of prosperity followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. It began with the 1994 “contract of the century”, which allowed foreign companies to develop the country’s oil fields, and culminated in the completion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline in 2006. The geopolitical importance of this cannot be stressed enough, because where this pipeline crucially doesn’t pass through is its large neighbour to the north – allowing this small Caucasian nation to break free from Russia’s economic yoke in a way that other resource-rich former republics like Kazakhstan have been unable to do. It now forms part of the wider Southern Gas Corridor, a network of pipelines to Europe that has made Azerbaijan one of the continent’s most important energy suppliers in the post-Ukraine era.
This economic freedom has occasioned far greater geopolitical latitude than many enjoy in the Russosphere, best exemplified by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This really deserves a separate post but in short it is a long-standing territorial and ethnic dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia. In a classic Stalinist attempt to divide and rule, the Armenian-majority region of Nagorno-Karabakh was established as an autonomous oblast of Azerbaijan, frustrating Armenian ambitions to unite their people and imperilling Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. The first war (1988–1994) saw Armenian forces take the enclave and surrounding districts by force, approximating 20% of Azerbaijan’s landmass. In 2020, a reconstituted Azerbaijan with Turkish support reversed most of these gains. A Russian-brokered ceasefire placed peacekeepers in the region to monitor the remainder of the enclave and the Lachin Corridor link to Armenia. So when Azerbaijan launched a full-scale offensive in 2023 to retake the entire territory, some eighteen months after the war in Ukraine broke out, it is hard not to read this as emblematic of waning Russian power in the region. From the vantage point of April 2026, Armenia was arguably the first domino in a series of strategic allies to have fallen away or been severely degraded – now including Syria, Venezuela and, most likely when the dust settles, Iran.
The human cost of this long conflict is quietly memorialised at Martyrs’ Lane, a hillside cemetery overlooking the Caspian where those killed in the first Karabakh war – and the victims of the 1990 Soviet crackdown – are laid to rest beneath an eternal flame.
It is worth noting that this assertive foreign policy is being conducted by a dynasty whose foundations are thoroughly Soviet. Heydar Aliyev, father of the current president Ilham, was a senior KGB official and Politburo member before independence, making his son’s increasingly confrontational posture toward Moscow all the more striking, and perhaps all the more credible for it. Both leaders are exalted at the Military Trophy Park, commemorating Azerbaijan’s victory in the 2020 war. It was suitably triumphalist, offering an impressive panoply of captured Armenian vehicles and heavy equipment. Given that most of it appeared to be legacy Soviet-era hardware, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that Azerbaijan was able to overwhelm Armenian forces as decisively as it did.
Fissures between Azerbaijan and its former overlord have only deepened since. The downing of an AZAL plane flying from Baku to Grozny by Russian air defences in 2024 sparked a diplomatic crisis in which President Aliyev vociferously denounced Russia, closing the Russian House cultural centre in Baku and detaining several Russian citizens – a stark contrast to the Malaysian government’s response to the downing of MH17 by Russian separatists in Ukraine a decade prior. Anecdotally, I was advised to use English rather than Russian for thanks and small greetings – traditionally the lingua franca of the region – in case it caused offence.
The undisputed highlight of the trip, however, had nothing to do with history or geopolitics. It was stumbling across the Taze Bey Hammam during one of my afternoon saunters. The entrance is guarded by gold, slightly possessed-looking statues, and it only delves further into the deranged as you move through; I’ll let the pictures do the talking on the décor. For about seventy pounds I got the full experience. Having never done one of these before, I can’t speak to how typical it was – though based on the surroundings, I’d wager not terribly.
I started in the sauna, whose walls and ceiling were covered with wooden tiki-style masks that became increasingly lifelike as I dehydrated. The water was infused with menthol, making the whole thing feel like inhaling Vicks on steroids, especially when the attendant burnt leaves into the ladle and held the steam to my face. From there I was firmly manhandled through the scrub stations and massage, both conducted with all the lightness of touch one might expect from hairy, middle-aged Caucasian men – though the neck click at the end was genuinely magnificent. The highlight, however, was the steam and birch-branch treatment. I was in there for what felt like an interminably long time and came close to calling it quits on more than one occasion. However, as there was a cute girl enduring this ordeal at the same time, I felt a certain duty to my gender to stick it out. The experience was punctuated with unsolicited dousings of ice water that provided much-needed reprieves. From there it was an easy finish: another scrub, jacuzzi, shower and a pot of black tea to send me on my merry way. Best two hours of the trip.
Postscript: my trigger-happy photography at the Military Trophy Park made for an interesting conversation with Russian border forces on my way into Abkhazia the following week, who unhelpfully requested to see my camera roll just after I’d told them about my visit to Ukraine in 2021.
