In October 2023, I had my first (and probably) only visit to this country and I took full advantage by visiting two UNESCO sites during my stay. The hotel was close to the office and about a half an hour walk from the old town, To gather my thoughts of the day I started walking and made it to the Maiden tower which is one of the main center pieces of this UNESCO world heritage site.  I had time to walk around it, take some pictures of the tower as well of some of the old sites that are exposed here.  It was too late to get to the top itself.  Later that week we came back and saw some more of the old town, like the Northern gate and the streets that are well cleaned up and restored in the center.

This site is on the UNESCO list as it is a historic place where civilization have been for 1000s of years and this has always been a central trading post between Russia, Iran, Turkey and other places.  The old town is still clearly present in between the rest of the city and it has been nicely restored.  However, the importance is more regionally than globally and it is not a first tier site that anybody in the world would recognize.  I am glad I was able to travel here and check out two UNESCO sites, but this is not normally a place a tourist would come to.  It was nice to walk around and explore the town without too much harassment as you see in some of these other towns (think Cairo).  Baku is not a tourist destination and not that easy to fly to, but once you are there, the old town is right in the middle of town, walking distance of most major hotels.