Baku

Updated October 2026

Overview and Things to Consider

Baku sits 28 meters below sea level on the Absheron Peninsula, the lowest-lying capital in the world, and the wind off the Caspian rarely lets you forget where you are. It has about 2.34 million people and three cities stacked on one bay. The walled Icherisheher, 21.5 hectares of stone lanes, caravanserais and the Maiden Tower, is the oldest. Around it runs a ring of 1900s mansions built by oil millionaires. Above both rise the newest layer, the three Flame Towers finished in 2012 and Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center from the same year.

You'll love Baku if architecture, oil history and long dinners are what you travel for, or if you want a Caucasus capital that looks nothing like Tbilisi or Yerevan; it is the least Soviet-looking of the three. You'll hate it if you need a loose, political, late-night city. Insulting the Aliyev family can land you in prison, LGBTQ+ locals keep a low profile, and metro guards will stand over you while you delete a photo. Some of the polish is a wall, too. Much of central Baku feels designed to be seen from the Boulevard rather than lived in.

The 2026 moment is a door half open. Azerbaijan closed its land borders in March 2020, citing COVID, and on September 17, 2026 the cabinet extended that closure again, to January 2, 2027. The Baku to Tbilisi sleeper came back on May 26, 2026, but only citizens and visa-free nationals may ride it, which leaves out Americans, Britons, Europeans and Australians. Formula 1 ran on a Saturday this year, September 26, and George Russell won by 0.196 seconds.

Two famous stops are overrated. Yanar Dag, the burning hillside, is smaller than the photos suggest and costs foreigners 15 AZN. The Maiden Tower's roof has a high glass barrier between you and the view. Spend that time at Gobustan instead.

How Baku Got Here

Oil made modern Baku. The first well was drilled in 1846, the Nobel brothers arrived in 1873 and the Rothschilds in 1882, and by the early 1880s a belt of refineries called Black Town smoked east of the center. At its peak, Baku supplied about half the world's oil. The money shows in the mansions you walk past every day: Musa Nagiyev's Venetian Gothic Ismailiyya Palace of 1913, Murtuza Mukhtarov's neo-Gothic Palace of Happiness from 1912, and Zeynalabdin Taghiyev's block-sized residence, now the National History Museum. The Nobels built Villa Petrolea from 1882 to house their Swedish, Norwegian and German staff, and its mansion reopened as a museum in 2008.

The walled city is far older. Its stone walls date to the 11th and 12th centuries, the Maiden Tower to at least the 12th, and the Palace of the Shirvanshahs to the 15th and 16th, built by a dynasty that ruled this coast from 861 to 1538. When Russia took Baku in 1806 the whole town fit inside the walls, 7,000 people in 500 households. UNESCO listed it in December 2000, Azerbaijan's first World Heritage site, then put it on the danger list from 2003 to 2009 after earthquake damage and poor restoration.

The Red Army took the city in 1920 and Baku became the Soviet Union's main oil town, with a metro from 1967. The ending was violent. A pogrom in January 1990 drove out Baku's large Armenian population, and days later Soviet troops killed civilians in what Azerbaijanis call Black January. Both sets of memories explain the hush around Armenia today, and Martyrs' Lane on the hill above the Boulevard, the old Kirov Park, holds the graves of Black January and the Karabakh wars.

Getting There and Around

Heydar Aliyev International Airport (GYD) is 25 km east of the center and, with the land borders closed, the only practical way in. Direct flights come from Istanbul, Dubai, Tbilisi and European cities including London Heathrow and Paris. The cheapest transfer is the T1 Aeroexpress bus to the railway station, with a stop at Koroglu metro: 1.30 AZN on a BakiKart, and contactless bank cards and phone wallets work too, though one Visa card was charged 1.52 AZN in July 2026. The airport says the line runs around the clock and takes 30 minutes. Bus N16 goes to Samed Vurgun Park for 1 AZN in 40 to 60 minutes. The single taxi company licensed at the airport charges close to 50 AZN, and Wander-Lush warns against hailing a Bolt at arrivals because of scams there.

US, UK, EU, Canadian and Australian passport holders all need a visa, bought online through the official ASAN Visa portal. It is single entry, allows 30 days inside a 90-day window, and takes up to three working days, or three hours for an urgent fee. Wikipedia lists US$25 for standard processing and $60 urgent; Wikivoyage itemizes $30 in fees, so budget $30. A copycat site at evisa.com.az sells visas bundled with overpriced tours. The e-visa is a printed A4 sheet, and you'll show it again on exit. The UK government wants six months left on your passport and two blank pages.

Stay more than 15 days and you must register with the State Migration Service; hotels often do it, but in an apartment you register yourself. Citizens of Armenia and people of Armenian descent are refused entry, and anyone with a surname ending in -yan or -ian should expect questions. Evidence of a trip to Nagorno-Karabakh without Azerbaijani permission can mean a permanent ban and arrest on arrival.

The metro has three lines and 27 stations and costs 0.60 AZN a ride since a fare rise on October 1, 2025. Buses cost the same. Buy a BakiKart from a station machine (3 AZN refundable deposit, English menus) and load it; one card can pay for several people. Trains run from 06:00 to midnight, every station has metal detectors, and photography underground is banned and enforced. At the 28 May and Jafar Jabbarli transfer stations, look hard for the signs. The funicular up to Highland Park costs 1 AZN.

Bolt is the ride-hailing app, and it doubles as a price check if you take a street cab, where drivers often quote double to foreigners and a ride inside the center should be 4 to 10 AZN. The Old City, Fountain Square, Nizami Street and the Boulevard are all walkable and mostly flat. Crossing the avenues between them is the hard part. Zebra crossings are a gamble, especially at night, so use the underpasses.

What's Changed Since 2016

Visas went online in January 2017. The ASAN e-visa is still how nearly every reader will get in. What changed in 2020 is the route. Azerbaijan shut its land borders in March 2020 and has extended the closure every few months since, most recently on September 17, 2026, to 06:00 on January 2, 2027. Cargo still crosses. People leaving by land have been allowed out, but foreigners can only enter by air.

The Tbilisi train returned on May 26, 2026, after six years. Azerbaijan Railways now runs new Stadler sleepers, leaving Baku at 23:10 and reaching Tbilisi at 08:41, with fares from 85 AZN in Comfort to 189 AZN in Luxe. The catch is the passenger list. Tickets in both directions are limited to Azerbaijani citizens and visa-free nationals such as Russians, Turks, Georgians and Kazakhs, so e-visa holders still fly.

Formula 1 arrived in June 2016, first as the European Grand Prix and from 2017 as the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, on a 6.003 km street circuit that loops Government House and squeezes past the Old City walls through a 7.6-meter-wide uphill section. The race is contracted to Baku until at least 2030. In 2026 it moved forward a day to Saturday, September 26, to avoid clashing with Remembrance Day, and the 2027 race is set for Sunday, September 26.

Gobustan's mud volcanoes got a ticket booth. For years you reached them in a hired Lada over dirt tracks. In June 2024 a 12-hectare Mud Volcanoes Tourism Complex opened with exhibition halls and a restaurant, and it now sells a 35 AZN combined ticket with Yanar Dag and the Ateshgah fire temple, valid for 72 hours. Baku also hosted COP29 at the Olympic Stadium in November 2024 and the World Urban Forum in May 2026.

Tourism hasn't recovered its 2019 peak. Azerbaijan logged 3.17 million foreign visitors in 2019, 2.63 million in 2024 and 2.57 million in 2025. Russians, Turks and Iranians were the top three every year from 2020 to 2023. For a Western visitor that means Baku is less crowded than its marketing suggests. Georgia, which sent 725,000 visitors in 2019, second only to Russia, had fallen to fifth by 2023, with 104,000.

What the Usual Advice Gets Wrong

"The Tbilisi to Baku sleeper is back, so you can travel overland through the Caucasus again." It runs nightly since May 26, 2026, but Azerbaijan Railways sells tickets only to citizens and visa-free nationals. If you need an e-visa, which covers Americans, Britons, Europeans, Canadians and Australians, you fly into Baku. Land and sea entry stay closed until at least January 2, 2027.

"Yanar Dag and the Ateshgah fire temple are the essential Baku day trip." Both have been built up for tour buses, and Yanar Dag is a gas-fed strip of flame on a small hillside that costs foreigners 15 AZN against 2 AZN for locals. Gobustan's petroglyphs, some of them tens of thousands of years old, and the mud volcanoes 30 minutes away are the stronger half of the standard tour.

"Climb the Maiden Tower for the best view over Baku." The roof has a tall glass barrier and the angle is poor, and entry costs 15 AZN. Ride the 1 AZN funicular to Highland Park at sunset instead, where the terrace looks over the bay, the Boulevard and the lit Flame Towers for free.

"Just order a Bolt at the airport." Bolt works well in town, but Wander-Lush reports scams around app pickups at arrivals, and the official taxi monopoly charges close to 50 AZN. The T1 Aeroexpress costs 1.30 AZN to the railway station and takes contactless cards.

"Baku's Soviet metro stations make a great photo walk." Photography inside the metro is banned and guards enforce it, standing over visitors while they delete pictures, including from the phone's trash folder. Look at Nizami and 20 Yanvar stations with your eyes, and photograph the glass pyramid at Avtovaghzal from outside.

"Baku is a beach city in summer." Shikhov Beach, south of the center, is polluted by sewage and industrial waste. The cleaner sand is at Bilgah and Amburan on the peninsula's north shore, where resorts such as Amburan Beach Club have pools and their own stretch of sand.

Ideas to Consider for Your Visit

Have you thought about doing the Old City as two visits, early morning and after dark? The lanes of the Icherisheher are open around the clock and free on foot (taxis pay 2 AZN to enter). Start at the top with the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, then work down to the Maiden Tower; a 36 AZN combo also covers the 17th-century Underground Bath museum and Tahir Salahov's house. Come back in the evening for the Agha Mikayil hammam, an 18th-century bathhouse with a scrub, cold plunge and pot of lemon tea. Mondays and Fridays are for women, the other five days for men.

If food is a priority, eat soup first. Piti, mutton and chickpeas cooked under a lump of fat in a sealed crock, is the national dish, and Firuze on Fountain Square has cooked Azerbaijani classics since 1986 in a 1917 building with bare stone walls hung with carpets. Dushbara, tiny lamb dumplings in broth, and qutab, thin griddled turnovers of lamb, cheese or greens, make cheap lunches. The underground Dolma restaurant does its namesake and plov in many versions, and Passage 145 off Fountain Square serves a Baku salad of tomato, red onion, cornelian cherries and mint, then balli tort honey cake. KEFLI pours Azerbaijani wine; book on weekends.

Walk the oil-boom ring that wraps the walls. Ismailiyya Palace on Istiglaliyyat Street, the Philharmonic of 1912 inspired by the Monte Carlo Casino, the Palace of Happiness and the Taghiyev mansion, now the National History Museum, all went up on oil money between the 1890s and 1913. Some doorways still carry the owners' initials or a Salve inscription. Local guide Gani Nasirov runs oil-heritage and Soviet-mosaic walks, and his oil tour took Wander-Lush inside the Palace of Happiness.

Gobustan, 67 km south, is the day trip worth the effort. The UNESCO-listed reserve holds more than 6,000 rock carvings of hunters, boats and dancers, with a museum that explains them before you walk the boulders. As of mid-2024 the do-it-yourself route was bus 125 to the Karvansaray mall, bus 195 to Gobustan town (1.30 AZN, 45 minutes), then a local taxi; about 30 AZN covered both the petroglyphs and the mud volcanoes. Bag Baku's group tours, which add Ateshgah and Yanar Dag, started at US$54 then.

Go see the Heydar Aliyev Center for the shape more than the exhibitions. Walk the full perimeter, where the white curve seems to fold around the apartment blocks behind it, then walk 25 minutes to the Yashil Bazar for Lankaran tea, dried fruit and walnut murabba. Save the evening for the Heydar Mosque, finished in 2014, 30 to 45 minutes north by taxi or near Nasimi metro. Arrive an hour before sunset. The floodlights come on about 20 minutes before sunset, and the call to prayer follows.

The Part Most Guides Miss

Baku's oil is still pumping in the suburbs, and you can walk among it. Balakhani, where a well was dug in 1593, is a whitewashed village of jasmine and murals with small nodding pumpjacks in the yards between houses, one of the few places in Azerbaijan where pointing a camera at oil gear won't get you questioned. Take the metro to Koroglu and bus 214 from the kiosks by the Olympic Park exit, about an hour on one card. Pair it with Villa Petrolea, the Nobel brothers' company town in Keshla, whose restored mansion tells the Branobel story better than any museum downtown. Most guides skip both for another lap of the Boulevard.

Where to Base Yourself

Icherisheher (Old City). The obvious first-timer base, inside the walls a few minutes from the Maiden Tower, with small hotels such as Deniz Inn inside the walls and The Merchant on the wall itself. Icherisheher metro station sits just outside the walls. The catch is cobbles and slopes for luggage, a 2 AZN taxi entry charge, and the F1 circuit wrapping the walls in late September.

Fountain Square and Nizami Street. Right outside the walls, the city's pedestrian shopping core, with restaurants such as Firuze and Passage 145 on the doorstep and hostels like Best Atmosphere on Torgovaya, as locals still call Nizami Street. Sahil and Icherisheher metro stations are close. Choose it for evenings on foot. The catch is noise, crowds on summer evenings and the rents of a street Wikivoyage counts among the world's most expensive.

Yasamal, near Nizami metro. A student neighborhood west of the Old City where budget places such as Cth Baku Hostel sit footsteps from Nizami station, whose platform mosaics are among the metro's best. The catch is that you'll ride the metro or walk 20 minutes to the sights, and it has little of the old-town atmosphere.

28 May and the railway station. The practical base for a short stay with onward travel. The T1 airport bus ends across from the main station, the night trains to Sheki and Tbilisi leave from here, and 28 May is the main metro interchange. The catch: heavy traffic and a metro ride or long walk to the Old City.

Realities to Be Aware Of

Budget travelers can sleep in a Hostelworld dorm for US$4 to $12, ride the metro for 0.60 AZN and eat qutab and kebabs from canteens, which keeps the daily outlay low until the two-tier ticket prices start. Wander-Lush puts a mid-range trip at US$40 to $50 a person a day with a mid-range hotel, local meals, day tours and museum tickets. Comfortable travel costs what the hotel costs, and the boutique hotels on the Old City wall are where the money goes. The manat sits at 1.70 to the US dollar, the Central Bank's official rate on October 2, 2026, and it has been fixed there since 2017.

The UK government calls crime in Baku generally low, with bag snatching more likely after dark. The hassles are specific. Street taxis overcharge, so agree a price first or use Bolt. Criminals have posed as police to take documents and cash, so ask for ID. ATM skimming happens. Don't photograph military sites, and don't bring a drone. Without residency, customs confiscates it and hands it back when you leave.

Politics is the real etiquette lesson. Insulting the Aliyev family is a criminal offense, and raising Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh can sour a friendly conversation fast. Same-sex activity has been legal since 2000, but there are no legal protections and homophobia is widespread, so LGBTQ+ travelers should skip public displays of affection. The UK advises against all travel within 5 km of the Armenian border and warns that regional tension can close airspace at short notice, a live risk with the 2026 war in neighboring Iran.

Drink sealed bottled water rather than tap. Pack a windbreaker in any season, since the peninsula is one of the breeziest places you'll visit. Women drink and go out freely in Baku, though teahouses and drinking outside the capital remain male spaces. Crowds are a small problem; the F1 weekend and the Novruz holiday in March are the busy exceptions.

If Baku Is Part of a Longer Trip

Baku works best as the first stop of a Caucasus loop, because you have to fly in anyway. Fly to Baku, head west into Georgia, and finish in Armenia; the Armenia-Azerbaijan border itself is closed. On an e-visa you can't take the new sleeper into Tbilisi, but foreigners have been allowed to leave Azerbaijan overland, and Wander-Lush crossed into Georgia on foot in 2023. Check the current exit rules before you count on it, and note that Georgia has required health and accident insurance from every arrival since January 1, 2026.

Inside Azerbaijan, Sheki is the trip. Five coaches a day and more frequent marshrutkas leave the Baku International Bus Terminal at Avtovagzal metro for 13.40 AZN and take 5 to 6.5 hours, or take the night train from the main station at 23:50, arriving at 05:50 for 16.40 AZN in Standard. Sheki station is about 20 km from town. A hired car with driver lets you stop at the Diri Baba cliff mausoleum, Shamakhi's Juma Mosque, founded in 734, and the copper-smiths' village of Lahij on the way.

Eastward the options shrink. The Iran border is closed to travelers, and Caspian ferries to Aktau in Kazakhstan and Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan are cargo boats that will take passengers out but not in. For most round-the-world routes, Baku slots in as an air hop: Istanbul and Dubai both have direct flights, and an open-jaw ticket into Baku and out of Yerevan or Tbilisi saves backtracking. AirTreks builds that kind of multi-stop routing.

Yearly Things to Consider

Two forces set Baku's calendar, heat and wind. July and August average 87°F (31°C) with almost no rain, on a dry, dusty peninsula. Winters are mild on paper, 45°F (7°C) highs in January, but a Caspian gale makes them feel colder, and November is the wettest month at 1.7 inches. The sweet spots are May and early June, then mid-September through October.

The counterintuitive move is to avoid late September unless you want the race. The F1 weekend falls then in 2026 and again in 2027 (September 24 to 26), and the circuit runs around the Old City walls and along the seafront, the two places you came to walk. Early October has the same 67°F (20°C) afternoons and none of the fencing. March is worth a look too. Novruz, the five-day spring holiday, lands in a Shoulder month with 52°F (11°C) afternoons and little rain.

Ideas for Itineraries

3 Days in Baku

Day one is the Old City: the Shirvanshahs Palace when it opens at 10:00, the Underground Bath museum, the Maiden Tower if you must, and lunch on qutab and dushbara. Walk the oil-boom mansions outside the walls in the afternoon, then ride the funicular to Highland Park for sunset and come down the stairs to the Boulevard. Day two is Gobustan's petroglyphs and the mud volcanoes, by tour or by bus and Lada taxi. Day three, see the Heydar Aliyev Center in the morning, shop the Yashil Bazar, and finish at the Heydar Mosque as the lights come on.

5 Days in Baku

Do the three-day plan, then give day four to the Absheron Peninsula: Balakhani's pumpjacks and whitewashed lanes in the morning, Ateshgah after lunch, and Yanar Dag at dusk, all on the 35 AZN combined ticket. On day five, visit Villa Petrolea and the Carpet Museum, book a hammam evening at Agha Mikayil (men five days a week, women Mondays and Fridays), and save dinner for piti at Firuze.

1 Week in Baku

Spend four days in Baku as above, then take the 23:50 night train to Sheki, arriving at dawn. Give Sheki two days for the Khan's Palace, the caravanserai and its pakhlava and chestnut piti. Come back by road with a driver, stopping at Lahij, Shamakhi's Juma Mosque and the Diri Baba mausoleum, or fly out of Baku if Georgia is next. Remember the e-visa allows 30 days and a single entry.

2 Weeks or More in Baku

Base yourself in Yasamal or around Fountain Square and live on the metro. Coffee Moffie has strong coffee, plenty of seating and wifi that remote workers use. Register with the State Migration Service before day 15 if your landlord hasn't, since fines apply. For weekends, take Sheki by night train, Gobustan with a guide from the museum, the north-shore beaches at Bilgah in summer, and a car-and-driver loop through Shamakhi and Lahij. Mid-trip, catch an opera at the restored 1911 Opera and Ballet Theatre, and save Highland Park for your last evening.

Sources

What this guide is built on. Every page below was read for this guide; prices and rules were checked in October 2026.

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