Baku

İçərişəhər, the walled Old City, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2000 along with the Palace of the Shirvanshahs and the Maiden Tower. The walls are largely twelfth-century; the settlement beneath runs back to the Bronze Age.

It is still a residential neighbourhood — around 1,300 people live inside the walls — which keeps it from feeling like a preserved exhibit. Inside are Silk Road caravanserais, hammams, the free Museum of Miniature Books, and a street plan designed to disorient attackers, which it still does to visitors.

Immediately outside the walls the city changes character completely. In the late nineteenth century Baku produced roughly half the world's oil, and the money went into buildings at extraordinary speed.

Nizami Street and the surrounding quarter are lined with the results: French, Venetian and Baroque revival facades commissioned by men who wanted European legitimacy. The National Museum of History occupies one such mansion — Taghiyev's — with several rooms preserved as he left them.

This is also the period that produced the Nobel connection. Branobel, the company of Ludvig and Robert Nobel, was one of the world's largest oil producers, and revenues from it formed a substantial part of the estate that endowed the Nobel Prize.

The contemporary city announces itself with the Flame Towers on the ridge and Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center to the east. Both are deliberate statements, and both are on our city tour.

Along the Caspian, Baku Boulevard runs for several kilometres — parkland, tea houses, Mini Venice's canals, Flag Square, the Baku Eye and the Carpet Museum, all on one flat, walkable stretch. Evening is when the city actually uses it.

The climate is semi-arid and windy. Summers are hot and dry, winters mild but exposed; the wind is a constant, and the name is popularly linked to a Persian phrase meaning 'city of winds'. A layer is worth carrying year-round.

Most nationalities can enter on an e-visa obtained online in advance, which is straightforward. Check current requirements for your passport before travelling.

One day covers the city's highlights properly. Two lets you add the Absheron fire sites or Gobustan without rushing.