GO CITY BREAK:With all eyes on Baku for the Eurovision Song Contest this weekend, tourists will flock to this historic, oil-rich city, writes DANIEL McLAUGHLIN
HERE IS A SPECIAL taste to the air in Baku, a tang of salt and oil from the Caspian Sea. The Persian fire-worshippers who made pilgrimage here knew that taste, as did the Nobels and Rothschilds who enlarged their fortunes in this city, and the young Josef Stalin whose Baku gang squeezed cash from the oil barons to fund Bolshevik revolutionary ambitions.
Foreign rulers helped shape Baku, and their legacy is clear in an intriguing oriental old town and some of the most handsome Soviet architecture seen anywhere in Moscow’s former empire.
But now Azerbaijan runs its own affairs and is using its oil riches to build spectacular new buildings in illuminated waves of glass, steel and stone. Fresh landmarks appear almost monthly.
One of the new spikes in the skyline is the Crystal Hall, which today will be the venue for the Eurovision Song Contest, an event Azerbaijan wants to use to introduce itself to potential tourists. Baku can’t do much about the music at this party, but it is doing its damnedest to look beautiful.
The locals are looking forward to an influx of visitors to what they proudly call “the easternmost city of Europe and the westernmost city of Asia”.
Where Baku gazes out across the Caspian towards Turkmenistan and Iran, people jog, cycle and roller-blade through the early morning cool along a promenade they call the Bulvar. Asia lies beyond this broad walkway between the sea and a carefully tended park. A vintage Ferris wheel lifts riders up above the canopy, from where they watch cars on Oil-Workers’ Boulevard.
The world’s leading designers are here; in a country where the average monthly wage is about €350, their customers are from the financial elite, the beneficiaries of Azerbaijan’s second oil boom. Its forerunner in the late 19th century transformed Baku from a provincial outpost of the Russian empire into a cosmopolitan city with districts not unlike Europe’s finest capitals.
The Nobels, Rothschilds and a host of colourful local and Russian magnates profited handsomely from Baku’s production of half the world’s oil, and revolutionised the industry with the first oil tankers, pipelines and offshore drilling rigs. The Swedish Nobel brothers realised the potential of Baku’s oil when searching the southern reaches of Russia’s empire for suitable wood to make guns for the tsar. The money they made from Caspian oil helped Alfred Nobel establish the prizes that still bear the family name.
The Nobels lived on the edge of Baku’s notorious Black City, where workers toiled among nodding derricks and pools of waste oil, and acrid smoke blotted out the sun. They made their Villa Petrolea an oasis in this industrial wasteland, set in vast gardens planted in rich soil delivered by oil-tanker to arid Baku and filled with trees from around Europe.
The villa is now home to a museum devoted to the Nobels, while the mansion built by the Rothschilds is Azerbaijan’s National Art Gallery. It stands opposite the Baku Philharmonic, one of the city’s impressive concert halls and theatres.
The Philharmonic building was originally an exclusive club, while today’s Baku offers plenty of fine restaurants and nightclubs to entertain residents and visitors alike. Surprisingly good Azeri wine and Russian vodka flow freely, unhindered by a secular government and the moderate Shia Islam practised by most of the population.
The favourite meeting places of Baku youth seem to be the shopping malls springing up all over the city. People of all ages also meet in and meander around Fountain Square, where familiar European chain stores and burger joints belie the fact that Iran is a mere 250km away.
A cafe-bookshop off the main square, Ali and Nino, helps ease the sense of incongruity. Here, you can drink coffee while leafing through the classic novel from which the establishment takes its name, about the Janus-faced nature of Baku and this region that straddles two continents.
Nino is a Georgian princess and Ali an Azeri nobleman, whose love affair defies clashes of tradition, religion and the turmoil of the first World war and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Ali is a descendant of the medieval Shirvanshah dynasty, which ruled the territory of today’s Azerbaijan from a palace in Baku’s Unesco-listed old town. The complex includes the royal living quarters, mosques and a mausoleum, adorned by flourishes of Arabic calligraphy.
The kind of elaborate carpets that lined the floors and walls of the palace are now for sale around the old town, where people lunch in former caravanserai on kebabs, warm bread and pomegranate juice. Between mouthfuls of grilled lamb, pork and beef, they pull tarragon, basil and parsley from the middle of the table.
Above the old town climbs the 12th-century Maiden Tower, which locals say is named for its impregnability or for a tragic princess who leapt from its ramparts, and was built as a defensive lookout and refuge, for making astronomical observations or perhaps as a Zoroastrian fire temple. It now houses a museum.
A 40-minute drive to the south, past the reconstructed Bibi-Heybat mosque, lies Qobustan, where more than 10,000 years ago local inhabitants covered their caves with thousands of engravings of scenes of hunting, fishing and fighting. Nearby, and part of the same Unesco site, are a cluster of little mud volcanoes that gurgle and plop with spurts of natural gas. The bubbling mineral-rich muck is said to be prized by the beauty salons of Baku, which glimmers in the distance beyond desolate suburbs of Soviet-era apartment blocks, oil derricks and vast terminals and pipelines built by the world’s big energy firms.
They were drawn by the same subterranean riches as the Indians who built a Hindu temple just north of Baku at Surakhany in the 18th century, at a place where flames mysteriously shooting from the ground had earlier attracted local and Persian fire-worshippers. Industrial gas extraction long ago extinguished the flames but the temple remains, complete with original inscriptions in Sanskrit, Punjabi and Persian; in the bare stone cells of the devotees, staring mannequins depict scenes from their ascetic lives.
Back on ritzy Oil Workers’ Boulevard, a flame motif flickers across posters advertising Eurovision with the slogan: “Light your fire!” In number, they are rivalled only by images of Heydar and Ilham Aliyev, the father and son who have governed Azerbaijan for almost 20 years. The Aliyevs are ubiquitous here: they look down from offices and shops; the Zaha Hadid-designed Heydar Aliyev Centre is one of Baku’s biggest construction projects; Ilham’s wife leads the Eurovision organising committee; their son-in-law will sing during the show.
Azerbaijan’s corruption and inequality resemble those in many ex-Soviet states, while its ruling dynasty and political intolerance are redolent of the Middle East and Central Asia. But Azeris speak proudly of how democracy, universal suffrage and ethnic and religious tolerance were cornerstones of independent Azerbaijan before Soviet occupation – and it would be hard to find anywhere in Europe with warmer hospitality than the Azeris. Baku is both cautious and bold, a Eurasian enigma lifting her veil to the world.
Baku: where to . . .
STAY
Boutique Palace Hotel,9 Aziz Aliyev St, 00994-124-922-288, boutique-palace.com. A well-appointed hotel right beside the walls of the old town. Doubles from 235 manats (€225).
Museum Inn Boutique Hotel, 3 Q Mohammed St, 00994-124-971-522, museuminn.az. In the heart of the old town, this hotel boasts a terrace with great views. Doubles from 160 manats (€150).
Azeri Guest House, Asef Zeynalli St, 00994-124-970-228. A good-value option in a prime location. Doubles from 80 manats (€75).
EAT AND DRINK
Art Garden,Asef Zeynalli St 22, 00994-124-921-331, artgroup.az. Superb traditional Azeri food and fine wines.
360 Bar, Hilton Baku hotel, Azadlig Ave 1, 00994-124-645-000, hilton.com/baku. Join Baku's in-crowd and big-spending visitors on the 25th floor. The Sky Grill, one floor below, comes highly recommended.
Karvansara, Boyuk Qala St 11, 00994-124-926-668. Two 14th-century caravanserais in the old town, one offering a sunny courtyard, the other a cellar dining room. Excellent Azeri classics such as lulya kebab, shashlik, and scented black tea accompanied by wild strawberry jam.
GET THERE
BMI ( flybmi.com) and BA ( ba.com) fly from London, and other connections are available with Austrian Airlines ( austrianairlines.com) through Vienna, Turkish Airlines ( turkishairlines.com) through Istanbul and Azal ( azal.az) from several European cities.
VISA DETAILS
Tourists must obtain visas from their nearest Azerbaijani embassy. Irish visitors should contact the Azeri embassy in London ( azembassy.org.uk). A tourist visa for three months costs £74 (€92) from the London embassy.
Daniel McLaughlin visited Baku with the assistance of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture and Tourism