Baku's Icherisheher, the Old City, holds UNESCO World Heritage status and contains the Palace of the Shirvanshahs from the 15th century. The complex served as the residence of the Shirvan dynasty rulers. Maiden Tower, a 12th-century cylindrical stone structure rising 29.5 meters, stands at the edge of the Old City facing the Caspian Sea. Archaeologists have not reached consensus on its original function. The Old City walls enclose approximately 22 hectares. The Heydar Aliyev Center, completed in 2012 from designs by Zaha Hadid, houses exhibition halls and a museum. The building's continuous curved surface covers 57,500 square meters without right angles. The Azerbaijan Carpet Museum, opened in its current purpose-built structure in 2014, displays over 10,000 items including carpets, textiles, and metalwork spanning centuries of Azerbaijani production.
Gobustan National Park, 64 kilometers south of Baku, contains over 6,000 rock engravings dating from 40,000 years ago to the medieval period. The petroglyphs depict humans, animals, boats, and hunting scenes carved into limestone. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2007. The park area includes approximately 537 mud volcanoes, the highest concentration of this geological feature anywhere on Earth. These formations erupt cold mud mixed with gases from underground reservoirs. Yanar Dag, 25 kilometers north of Baku, is a natural gas fire burning continuously on a hillside. The flames extend approximately 10 meters along a 60-meter stretch of rock face. Natural gas seeping through porous sandstone has burned here for centuries, though the current visible fire may have been accidentally ignited in the 1950s.
Shaki, in northwestern Azerbaijan, houses the Shaki Khan's Palace built in 1797 by Muhammed Hasan Khan. The two-story structure features exterior walls covered in frescoes and shebeke, a traditional stained glass technique using hand-cut colored glass fitted into wooden lattices without glue or nails. The palace contains six rooms. Shaki served as capital of the Shaki Khanate from 1743 to 1819. The city sits at the southern edge of the Greater Caucasus mountains at an elevation of approximately 500-850 meters. Caravanserais from the 18th century functioned as rest stops on the historic Silk Road route through the region.
Gabala, 225 kilometers northwest of Baku, served as capital of Caucasian Albania from the 4th century BCE until the 8th century CE. Archaeological excavations have uncovered remnants of defensive walls and residential structures. The modern town developed separately from the ancient site. Lake Goygol, formed in 1139 following an earthquake that blocked the Agsu River, sits in the Lesser Caucasus at 1,556 meters elevation. The lake extends 2.8 kilometers in length with a maximum depth of 93 meters. The area holds protected status as part of Goygol National Park established in 1925.
Gobustan mud volcanoes erupt at irregular intervals, some producing eruptions several meters high. Azerbaijan contains approximately 350 of the world's estimated 800 mud volcanoes. The Lokbatan mud volcano erupted in 2001 with flames reaching 15 meters. These formations result from pressurized gases forcing mud upward through geological faults. The expelled material typically consists of clay, water, and hydrocarbons. Scientists study these sites as potential analogs for subsurface processes on Mars.
Ateshgah Fire Temple, on the Absheron Peninsula near Baku, was built by Hindu traders in the 17th and 18th centuries. The pentagonal complex centers on a natural gas vent that produced flames. Inscriptions in Sanskrit and Punjabi date from 1802 and 1810. The site also attracted Zoroastrian worshippers. Natural gas pressure declined in the late 19th century and the temple was abandoned by 1883. The current flame operates on piped gas. The structure entered state protection in 1975.
Hirkan National Park in southern Azerbaijan preserves 29,760 hectares of Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests, a temperate rainforest ecosystem receiving 1,600-1,700 millimeters of annual rainfall. UNESCO recognized these forests across Azerbaijan and Iran in 2019. The park contains the Parrotia personica tree, endemic to this region, and populations of the Persian leopard. The Talysh Mountains reach elevations above 2,400 meters in this area. Lankaran, the nearest city, sits on the coastal plain 25 kilometers from the Iranian border.