Sheki

Sheki was a significant stop on the Silk Road and a major centre of sericulture — silk production — in its own right. The caravanserais that survive show exactly how that trade worked: goods and animals secured at ground level, merchants sleeping directly above their own merchandise, the whole complex locked at night.

The Upper Caravanserai is the best preserved, and part of it still operates as a hotel, which means you can sleep in an eighteenth-century Silk Road inn.

The old bazaar continues to trade, and coppersmiths and other craftspeople still work in the surrounding lanes.

The Palace of the Sheki Khans, built in 1797, is the town's centrepiece. It is small — six rooms — but its shebeke windows are extraordinary: thousands of hand-cut pieces of coloured glass and wood assembled per square metre with no nails, no glue, and no adhesive of any kind.

The technique survives in a handful of Sheki workshops, and watching it practised is one of the better craft experiences available in the country.

The interior frescoes — hunting scenes, battles, dense floral ornament — are equally worth the time.

Sheki has a distinct culinary identity. Piti, a mutton and chickpea stew slow-cooked and served in individual clay pots, is the local speciality and is eaten in a specific two-stage way that any local will happily explain. Sheki halva is different from halva elsewhere — layered, syrup-soaked and worth trying.

Just outside town at Kish is a church associated with Caucasian Albania, an ancient Christian state of the region. It is a small, plain stone building and one of the oldest church sites in the Caucasus.