The occasional and probably unreliable recollections of an aging female. My previous post here describes our journey across Azerbaijan, arriving in Baku station at It was already becoming dusk and I was quite ready to retire to a hotel room but the organisers had decided that our walking tour of the Old City, which had been planned for that morning, would take place before we checked into our hotel.
A little background The history of the area now forming Azerbaijan is very complex. There's a useful Wikipedia article here but I found a three-minute animation from 'Cartographious' here which shows the various changes informative. Use the 'Back Button' to return here. Imperial Russia, seeing the strategic importance of the area, pursued a series of wars against Persia and eventually managed to wrest control, as shown in another animation, this time from 'EmperorTigerstar', here.
The astonishing wealth-creation and growth of Baku in the 19th century resulted from the unique geology of the area. The world's first oil well was drilled at Bibiheybat, Baku in and the increasing demands for petroleum products both in the Russian Empire and in the West had attracted the attentions of the Nobel Brothers and Rothschilds by Thursday 27th September Evening The coaches drove us on busy streets from Baku railway station to a dropping-off point near the Old City.
Although there were large, ambitious modern 'skyscrapers', the more conservative architecture lining the streets was similar to European and American cities developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries featuring Baroque, Gothic and Beaux-Arts styles, together with later Soviet styles.
The picture below illustrates this architectural mix, with a medieval Persion palace foreground , Soviet-style rear left - although Baku TV Tower, started , was not completed until after the collapse of the Soviet Union and ultra-modern rear right two of the three 'Flame Towers' described on Wikipedia here. A mix of architectural styles in Baku, Azerbaijan: Persian, Soviet and ultra-modern.
