Azerbaijan

Arrival at Baku International Airport, where our guide meets you after passport control. Transfer to the hotel in Baku, the capital on the shore of the Caspian Sea.

Depending on the arrival time, the rest of the day is free for a first walk along the seaside Baku Boulevard, where locals stroll in the evening beneath the illuminated Flame Towers.

We start at Upland Park, the highest point of the city, with a panorama of Baku Bay — often compared with the Bay of Naples, Baku’s twin city. Then the Old City, Icherisheher (UNESCO), surrounded by the elegant early-20th-century mansions of the oil barons. Inside the walls we visit the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, the Maiden Tower, the ruins of St Bartholomew’s Church, old hammams and mosques. Lunch in a local restaurant.

In the afternoon Gobustan, where more than 4,000 rock carvings from the Neolithic period show hunters and ritual dancers, alongside Latin graffiti left by a Roman legion in the 1st century AD. Nearby lie the mud volcanoes, over a hundred bubbling cones in a lunar landscape, and on the way back the Bibi-Heybat Mosque above the Caspian.

We leave Baku for Sheki, one of the most important towns of the Silk Road. In the village of Mereze we visit the Diri Baba Mausoleum (1402), built into the rock face around a natural cave and long a place of pilgrimage. In Shamakhi, the former capital of the Shirvanshahs, the restored Juma Mosque is one of the oldest in the region. Lunch on the way.

Near Sheki we visit the village of Kish and its church, founded in the early centuries of Christianity in Caucasian Albania and now a small museum. Check-in in Sheki.

After breakfast we drive to Ganja, the second city of Azerbaijan with more than 2,500 years of history and the birthplace of the poet Nizami. We see the whimsical Bottle House, decorated with thousands of glass bottles, the Executive Government Building, the 17th-century Shah Abbas Mosque and the Tomb of Javad Khan, the last khan of Ganja.

After lunch in a local restaurant we walk through the historic centre with its red-brick architecture and parks. Check-in and a free evening.

More of Ganja in the morning: the historic Chokak Hamam, the Juma Mosque and the Imamzade Mausoleum, with its blue-tiled dome, one of the most important shrines of Azerbaijan. Just outside the city stands the Mausoleum of Nizami Ganjavi, dedicated to the great 12th-century poet whose works remain treasures of Persian and Azerbaijani literature.

After lunch we drive back to Baku (approx. 5 hours), arriving in the late afternoon. Free evening.

North along the Caspian towards Guba, with a stop at the striped red-and-white Candy Cane Mountains of Khizi. In Guba we cross the river to the Red Settlement (Qırmızı Qəsəbə), one of the very few all-Jewish towns outside Israel, home of the Mountain Jews, and visit a carpet workshop where Guba carpets are still woven by hand. Lunch in a local restaurant.

In the afternoon a mountain road takes us to Khinalig, at over 2,000 m one of the highest and most remote villages of the Caucasus, with its own language and stone houses stacked on the slope. Visit the local history museum and return to Baku.

A day on the Absheron Peninsula, the “Land of Fire”. The Ateshgah Fire Temple in Surakhani was built over a natural gas vent and served Zoroastrian, Hindu and Sikh worshippers. At Yanardag, the “Burning Hill”, natural gas has burned out of the rock for centuries. Lunch.

Back in Baku we visit the flowing white Heydar Aliyev Center designed by Zaha Hadid, and the Yashil Bazar, the green market, with fresh produce, spices, dried fruits, nuts and Azerbaijani sweets — a colourful slice of daily life.

Breakfast and free time until the transfer to the airport according to the flight schedule (check-out by 12:00). End of the tour.