Heydar Aliyev Center
Zaha Hadid's landmark cultural building. A continuous white curve with no straight lines.
Included in 3 tours
Tourist attractions in Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan's attractions fall into three broad kinds: the ancient, the geological, and the deliberately spectacular. The country has UNESCO-listed rock art older than the pyramids, hillsides that have burned continuously for centuries because natural gas seeps through the rock, and a capital skyline of flame-shaped towers built specifically to reference that fact.
Below is every site our tours stop at, grouped by region. Each page covers what it actually is, how long to allow, what to know before you go, and which packages include it.
20 places listed
In and around Baku
İçərişəhər, Baku Old City
The walled medieval core of Baku, a UNESCO World Heritage Site enclosing the Maiden Tower and the Palace of the Shirvanshahs.
Included in 4 tours
Baku Boulevard & Mini Venice
The Caspian seafront promenade. Parkland, canals, Flag Square and the Baku Eye.
Included in 1 tour
Baku Eye
The seafront observation wheel at Flag Square, with enclosed cabins over the bay.
Included in 1 tour
Flame Towers
Three flame-shaped towers above the city, screened with LEDs that turn the skyline into a fire display after dark.
Included in 3 tours
Highland Park & Martyrs' Lane
The hilltop terrace with the best panorama over Baku bay, reached by funicular.
Included in 1 tour
Maiden Tower
The enigmatic stone tower at the edge of the Old City, Baku's oldest and least explained monument.
Included in 3 tours
Nizami Street
Baku's pedestrianised main shopping street, running through the oil-boom quarter.
Included in 1 tour
Palace of the Shirvanshahs
The 15th-century seat of the Shirvan rulers, and the largest surviving monument of the Shirvan-Absheron architectural school.
Included in 3 tours
Absheron Peninsula
Gobustan National Park
UNESCO-listed prehistoric rock art. Over 6,000 petroglyphs across a semi-desert landscape south of Baku.
Included in 3 tours
Gobustan Mud Volcanoes
Cold bubbling mud cones in the semi-desert near Gobustan. Azerbaijan has more of them than anywhere on earth.
Ateshgah Fire Temple
A pentagonal caravanserai-temple built around a natural gas vent, used by Zoroastrian, Hindu and Sikh worshippers.
Included in 3 tours
Yanardag, Fire Mountain
A hillside that has burned continuously for centuries, fed by natural gas seeping through the sandstone.
Included in 3 tours
Quba & Shahdag
Candy Cane Mountains
Striped red-and-white hills on the road to Shahdag, coloured by iron-rich sedimentary banding.
Included in 3 tours
Five Finger Mountain
A five-pronged limestone outcrop rising beside the northern highway, and a long-standing pilgrimage site.
Included in 3 tours
Gabala region
Nohur Lake
A still forest-ringed lake outside Gabala, with paddle boats and drowned trees standing in the shallows.
Included in 2 tours
Tufandag Mountain Resort
Gabala's cable-car resort, climbing from the town into alpine meadows and ski slopes above.
Included in 2 tours
Sheki
Sheki Caravanserai
A surviving Silk Road merchants' inn, with stables and storerooms below and lodgings above.
Included in 2 tours
Sheki Khan's Palace
An 18th-century summer residence famous for shebeke. Stained glass assembled without nails or glue.
Included in 2 tours
Shamakhi
Shamakhi Juma Mosque
One of the oldest mosques in the Caucasus, founded in the 8th century and rebuilt many times since.
Included in 2 tours
The three UNESCO World Heritage sites
Azerbaijan has three World Heritage inscriptions and all three are reachable on our tours. The walled Old City of Baku, İçərişəhər, was inscribed in 2000 together with the Palace of the Shirvanshahs and the Maiden Tower, and it is still a residential neighbourhood of around 1,300 people rather than a preserved shell.
Gobustan, inscribed in 2007, holds more than 6,000 petroglyphs spanning roughly 40,000 years, along with a first-century Roman inscription marking about the easternmost reach of the empire. It sits an hour south of Baku.
Sheki's historic centre and the Palace of the Sheki Khans were inscribed in 2019, recognising the town's Silk Road heritage and its shebeke stained glass. Thousands of hand-cut pieces assembled per square metre with no nails or glue. Only the Grand Azerbaijan Tour and the Mountains, Fire & Silk Road package reach it.
The Land of Fire, literally
The fire sites are what most visitors remember. Yanardag is a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula where natural gas seeps through porous sandstone and burns at the surface, continuously, through rain, snow and wind. It is dramatically better after dark, and we schedule it last where the itinerary allows.
Ateshgah, in Surakhani, is a pentagonal temple complex built around a natural vent. Its cell inscriptions are in Sanskrit, Punjabi and Persian, recording use by Hindu and Sikh merchants alongside Zoroastrian worship. Its original vent was exhausted by industrial gas extraction in the 1960s, and the flame now runs on the municipal supply, worth knowing before you arrive.
Nearby, the mud volcanoes near Gobustan push up cold grey mud rather than lava. Azerbaijan has around 400 of the roughly 1,000 known worldwide.
Mountains and landscape
North of Baku the road climbs toward Quba and Shahdag, passing the Candy Cane Mountains. Iron-rich sedimentary banding reading as diagonal red-and-cream stripes, and Five Finger Mountain, a limestone massif rising straight from the coastal plain with a pilgrimage shrine near its summit.
West toward Gabala the landscape turns to beech forest. Tufandag's cable car climbs from the town into alpine meadow, and Nohur Lake sits in a bowl of forested hills with bare trunks standing in still water.
Both routes are covered by our multi-day packages, and both are worth the drive in their own right rather than merely being the journey to somewhere else.
Frequently asked questions
What are the top tourist attractions in Azerbaijan?
The UNESCO-listed Old City of Baku with the Maiden Tower and Palace of the Shirvanshahs, the prehistoric rock art at Gobustan, the burning hillside at Yanardag, the Ateshgah fire temple, the Flame Towers, the Heydar Aliyev Center, and the Silk Road town of Sheki.
How many UNESCO sites does Azerbaijan have?
Three. The walled Old City of Baku (2000), the rock art landscape of Gobustan (2007), and the historic centre of Sheki with the Khan's Palace (2019). All three are covered by our Grand Azerbaijan Tour.
What can you see in Azerbaijan in two days?
A full day in Baku plus one day covering either Gobustan and the Absheron fire sites, or the mountains at Shahdag. The Fire & Rock Adventure and Mountain Escape packages are built around exactly those two choices.
Are entry tickets to attractions included?
No. Entry tickets are set by the venues or by government authorities and are paid on-site. Our packages cover the vehicle, driver, route and airport transfers.
Ready to plan your trip?
Tell us your dates and group size and we will put together the right itinerary and vehicle.
Or call +994 77 199 17 55 , 08:00 to 20:00, 7 days a week