Ateshgah Fire Temple

The history here is more interesting than 'Zoroastrian fire temple' suggests. Inscriptions carved above the cells are in Sanskrit, Punjabi and Persian, and they record the site's use by Hindu and Sikh merchants travelling the trade routes between India and the Caspian alongside Zoroastrian practice.

Those merchants were part of a substantial Indian trading community in Baku. Some inscriptions invoke Hindu deities, others Sikh formulations, others Zoroastrian. The same courtyard served all of them.

Ascetics lived in the perimeter cells and practised austerities, in some cases lying on hot lime or hanging weights from their bodies. Several of the small rooms preserve the fittings that made this possible.

The original natural vent was exhausted in the 1960s by industrial gas extraction across the peninsula. The flame today is fed from the municipal gas supply.

That is worth knowing before you arrive, because it sets expectations correctly. The fire is real and the structure is authentic; the source is not what it was for most of the site's history. Active worship ceased in the late nineteenth century.

The site is now a state historical-architectural reserve, with a small museum in some of the cells covering the site's history, the Indian trading community and Zoroastrian practice on the peninsula.

It is compact — 45 minutes is enough — and it sits within a short drive of Yanardag and the Qala complex, which is why the three are normally combined into one Absheron half-day.