Why Baku?

Icherisheher is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with homes, mosques and caravanserais inside its walls, not a museum quarter.

Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Center, the Flame Towers and the oil-boom mansions of the 1900s tell three different stories of ambition.

Halal meat is the everyday norm and the call to prayer still sounds over the Old City.

Gas flames burn out of a hillside at Yanar Dag, and fire worshippers once kept vigil at Ateshgah.

Shahdag Mountain Resort in the Greater Caucasus is about three hours north, for a ski or snow day.

Rock carvings thousands of years old and bubbling mud volcanoes lie an hour south of the city.

Black tea in pear-shaped armudu glasses with jam and sweets is the rhythm of every day.

A short flight, an e-visa for Kuwaiti citizens and a familiar welcome for Gulf families.