Baku layers Zoroastrian fire worship, Persian khanate rule, a Nobel-funded oil boom and Soviet occupation into one peninsula. Three days here trace fire temples, oil-baron mansions, the Black January graves and Bronze Age petroglyphs.
Pentagonal Zoroastrian-Hindu temple built 17th–18th century by Indian merchants over a natural gas vent. Cells around the courtyard housed ascetics; Sanskrit and Punjabi inscriptions survive above the doorways. Open 10:00–18:00, though the site gate opens earlier.
Two 14th–15th century merchant inns inside the walled city, built for Indian traders from Multan and Central Asians from Bukhara. Sunken courtyards, vaulted cells now used as dining alcoves — the stonework is original Shirvan masonry.
Baku's oldest dated mosque, its inscription reading 1078–79 AD. The 'Broken Tower' minaret was shelled by the Russian fleet in 1723; locals say a storm then wrecked the ships, and the damage was left unrepaired as a deliberate memorial.
An 18th-century bathhouse built by Hajji Agha Mikayil from Shamakhi, still functioning after 250 years. Domed chambers with skylight ports; women bathe Mondays and Fridays, men on other days. Sessions run roughly 09:00–20:00.
The 1890s palace of oil millionaire Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, who funded Azerbaijan's first secular girls' school. His preserved Oriental and Rococo rooms sit above 2,000+ archaeological objects. Open 10:00–18:00, closed Mondays.
Ludvig and Robert Nobel's 1884 headquarters and garden villa in the Black City oil district, restored in 2008. Ledgers, tanker models and photographs document Branobel, which by 1900 supplied roughly half the world's oil.
Hilltop graves of civilians killed when Soviet troops stormed Baku on 20 January 1990, alongside Karabakh war dead and 1918 Ottoman-Azerbaijani soldiers. The site was a Soviet park built over an older Muslim cemetery.
Istiglal Street holds the 1918 building where the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic — the Muslim world's first parliamentary republic — declared independence, plus the Ismailiyya Palace in Venetian Gothic, burned in 1918 and rebuilt.
UNESCO site 64 km south with over 6,000 petroglyphs spanning 40,000 years — dancing figures, reed boats, aurochs hunts. A Roman graffito from Legio XII Fulminata, carved around 84–96 AD, marks Rome's easternmost known inscription.
Cold grey mud cones bubbling over the same geology that made Baku an oil city; ancient travellers read them as fire-and-earth omens. Azerbaijan holds roughly 350 of the world's 800-odd mud volcanoes, most on this stretch of coast.
A 14th-century Shirvanshah watchtower in Ramana village, part of the defensive chain guarding Baku's approaches. Square keep with a corner tower, restored in 2010; the surrounding village retains its low stone-walled lanes.
The 1187 Mardakan keep, built by Shirvanshah Akhsitan I to mark a military victory, stands 22 m over a walled courtyard. Nearby Sabunchu served the oil-boom rail line that carried workers to the Balakhani fields.