From Ancient to Modern Baku

After having breakfast at the hotel, the tour will start at 09:30 local time.

The first place we will visit on our tour will be the Ateshgah Fire Temple. This place, located 30 km from Baku, was built in the 17th and 18th centuries. From that time until today, the fire temple has continued to burn. Until 1880, Ateshgah was a place of pilgrimage for Hindus. At present, beautiful landscaping works have been carried out in that area, and a museum has been created.

Then our destination will be the Yanardag State History, Culture, and Nature Reserve. The history of this eternally burning mountain is unknown.

Today, our excursion will continue with a visit to the village of Gala (40 minutes away from Baku), which has a State History-Ethnography Reserve and an Open-Air Museum, which gives an opportunity to see the original lifestyle of the Azerbaijani people from the 10th–19th centuries. This is a unique place where you can not only take a tour of the past but also bake bread in the ancient oven “Tandir”, weave carpets, rub clay in the pottery workshop, and feed camels and horses.

Lunchtime.

The next place we will visit will be the Heydar Aliyev Center. The center’s project was developed in 2007 by the world-famous architect Zaha Hadid. Stop by the famous “I Love Baku” sign to take a photo.

Park Bulvar Mall is considered the first modern shopping center in Baku. In addition to the world’s favorite brand stores, there are also a number of entertainment such as a luxurious restaurant, cinema, and bowling.

We will go to Daghustu Park (Highland Park) to see Baku from the highest point. Here, you will enjoy a panoramic view of the city of Baku and the Caspian Sea. You will have a chance to see the Flame Towers, one of the famous buildings in Baku. This complex’s height, consisting of three skyscrapers, is 182 m. The three flame-shaped towers are intended to symbolize the elements of fire and refer to Azerbaijan’s nickname, “The Land of Fire”.

Return to the hotel.

After breakfast at the hotel, the tour will start at 09:30 local time.

The first stop of our tour will be Gobustan and Mud volcanoes. You will visit the Petroglyphs Museum in a place called Gobustan, a mountain town located in the southeast of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, 60 km from Baku. Ancient settlements of primitive people have been found here. There are many rock paintings.

One of the cradles of human civilization, Gobustan, included in the UNESCO heritage list, is located one hour away from Baku. It has an amazing collection of over 6,000 ancient petroglyphs depicting lifeways dating back up to 40,000 years.

This is an open-air museum. Thousands of people from all over the world visit this art gallery every year.

Not far from Gobustan, a second wonder will amaze you no less than prehistoric paintings on the rocks—these are the Mud Volcanoes.

350 of the world’s 800 mud volcanoes are located here; one of them is in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest. (Visiting mud volcanoes depends on weather conditions.)

On the way back from the Gobustan area, we will pass the Bibi-Heybat mosque and stop there for a while. Bibi-Heybat in Baku City is a historical mosque. The current building, built in the 1990s, is a recreation of the 13th-century mosque of the same name built by Shirvanshah II Farrukhzad II Ibn Akhsitan, which was completely destroyed by the Bolsheviks in 1936. Today, the Bibi-Heybat Mosque is a spiritual center for the region’s Muslims and one of the main monuments of Islamic architecture in Azerbaijan.

The last place we will visit on our excursion will be the world’s first industrially drilled oil well. Industrial production of oil was started in Baku for the first time in history. This event was known in Azerbaijan, but recently, documentary evidence was found in the archive. As a result, the world’s first oil well dug in the village of Bibiheybat near Baku in 1846 at a depth of 21 m was discovered, restored, and turned into an open-air museum.

Lunchtime.

Return to the hotel.

Breakfast at the hotel.
Transfer to Baku airport.