Caspian capital sits ninety-two feet below sea
Baku is Azerbaijan's capital, the largest city in the Caucasus and on the Caspian, and at 28 metres below sea level the lowest-lying national capital anywhere. Its twelve raions and 48 townships even include Neft Daşları, a settlement built on oil rigs far out at sea.
Over two million people live in the city, roughly a quarter of the whole country, and it lies on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula beside the Bay of Baku. The walled Old City, home to the Palace of the Shirvanshahs and the Maiden Tower, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. Harsh winter storms earned the nickname City of Winds, and a 19th-century folk etymology read the name as Persian for wind-pounded town; scholars instead trace it to Old Persian baga, god, which gave Bagavan under the Sasanians.
Settlement reaches back to the Stone Age. Bronze Age carvings turned up near Bayil, and rock images of the sun and constellations near Nardaran appear to form a prehistoric observatory. Roman troops reached the area in the 1st century AD, leaving inscriptions at Gobustan dated between 84 and 96. The Shirvanshahs ruled from the 8th century, beat off a Rus' raid with a new navy in 1170, and moved their court here in 1191 after an earthquake wrecked Shamakhi; the Maiden Tower and a ring of castles date from the next two centuries.
Safavid Shah Ismail I took the city in 1501, and Indian merchants later built the Ateshgah fire temple, used by Hindus, Sikhs and Zoroastrians. Peter the Great seized Baku in 1723 but handed it back in 1735, and the treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 settled it inside the Russian Empire.
In recent years the city has hosted Eurovision in 2012, the 2015 European Games, Formula One races since 2016 and the 2024 UN climate summit.
Source: Baku
