Taken as a whole Baku is, in my opinion, “worth a journey”. However, the medieval part of it, which has been inscribed as a WHS site, is not particularly notable or interesting in itself – “worth a visit” for an hour or so if you are already there but a bit lost in the modernity of Baku and lacking the scale and atmosphere of some other such Central Asian medieval cities. Perhaps its most amazing aspect is that it even survived the changes in Baku during the Oil boom and the Soviet era.

There are however a number of sites on the WHS Tentative list around Baku which should not be missed including the petroglyphs and “singing stones” at Gobustan and the Zoroastrian Fire Temple in the suburb of Surakhany. A number of more modern sights are also “worth the journey”:-

a. many fine buildings from the 19th century “oil boom city”

b. the “surreal” environment in the oil fields around the city with pipework, “nodding donkeys” and seeping oil everywhere

c. the artificial islands and roads leading from the shore to oil wells stretching far out into the Caspian