Baku City, Azerbaijan — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Baku City known for?

Baku City is known as the seat of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan and the largest city of the Caucasus. The region occupies the Absheron Peninsula, its shores set on the Caspian Sea around the Bay of Baku. Its pull is almost entirely urban.

Nearly all of what draws visitors gathers in Baku itself, from the walled Old Town, held as a UNESCO World Heritage site, to the mix of architecture along the coast.

Where is Baku City?

Baku City sits on the Absheron Peninsula, a spur of land reaching into the Caspian Sea from the eastern edge of Azerbaijan. The region takes in the city of Baku and its immediate surrounds. Baku lies along the southern shore of the peninsula, gathered around the Bay of Baku, a broad inlet that cuts into the Caspian coast.

Much of it lies below sea level. The land sits low against the Caspian, low enough that Baku ranks as the lowest-lying capital in the world, dropping beneath the level of the open sea. The region belongs to the wider Caucasus.

At the meeting of the Caspian Sea and the South Caucasus, Baku City opens Azerbaijan to the water, its shores facing the sea while the rest of the country stretches inland to the west. Its footprint is compact. The whole region covers a small stretch of the Absheron Peninsula, far smaller than the regions inland, yet it holds the largest city in the Caucasus within its bounds.

Baku holds it all together. From the Old Town on the bay to the outer edge of the peninsula, the region reads as one urban expanse on the Caspian shore of Azerbaijan.

What is Baku City like?

The culture of Baku City is the culture of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Written in Azerbaijani as Bakı, the city has long drawn together the strands that cross the Caucasus, and the region carries that blend as its defining character. Many worlds overlap here.

In the streets of the Old Town, Turkish-Islamic forms stand alongside Western European and Russian influences, a mix that gives Baku City its layered identity on the Caspian Sea. The Old Town holds it in stone. Baku's walled Old Town carries UNESCO World Heritage status, a quarter of lanes and old walls above the Bay of Baku.

Its walls have stood for centuries above the water, the oldest layer of a city that kept building outward around them. That heritage sits at the region's heart. Around it, the wider city carries the Western European and Russian-Eastern European architecture that grew up as Baku became the great centre of the Caspian and the Caucasus.

Azerbaijani is the language of the region. As the capital region, Baku City gathers the country's public and cultural life onto the Absheron Peninsula, the meeting ground of Azerbaijan's ties across the Caucasus and beyond.

What is the history of Baku City?

Baku City's history is the history of Baku. The region formed around a city that had long stood on the Absheron Peninsula, its walled Old Town the ancient core from which Baku grew outward along the Caspian Sea. Trade and rule passed through it for centuries.

As Azerbaijan took its modern shape, Baku became the national capital, and the region around it was set apart as the country's central administrative unit on the Caspian coast of the Caucasus.

What is the climate of Baku City?

Baku City has a temperate climate on the Caspian Sea. Sitting low on the Absheron Peninsula, the region sees warm summers and cool winters, with the water of the Caspian steadying the swing between the seasons along the shore. The sea shapes the air here.

Around Baku and the Bay of Baku, the coast feels the moderating pull of the Caspian, while the seasons still turn clearly across the year.

How do you get to Baku City?

Reaching Baku City means reaching Baku. The region is served through the capital, the main point of arrival on the Caspian Sea and the busiest hub of the Caucasus. Everything funnels through the city.

Roads and rail run out from Baku across the Absheron Peninsula and inland into the rest of Azerbaijan, while the Caspian shore closes the region's eastern side.