Exploring Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, reveals a city rich in cultural and architectural diversity beyond its initial Soviet-era impression. This discovery is especially poignant during a break from the COP29 climate conference, offering insights into a place that blends Islamic, Ottoman, and unique Azerbaijani influences.
The error is understandable. Sometimes the first glance is like the first taste. One draws quick conclusions, but then texture kicks in and layers of senses correct the hasty mistake. If Russia and Turkiye had a child, it would be something else, but not Azerbaijan ; not Baku , its capital, and certainly notThere is likely a stereotype that one brings when meeting Baku for the first time.
One might enjoy an occasional encounter with Brutalist buildings outside, but there’s no rigid Soviet architecture inand even astride the walls, and on the horizon no Stalinist structure impedes one’s view. Islamic influences clearly abound, but Ottoman sway is not alone what makes up what is Azerbaijani. Ask about the influence the people of Azerbaijan exerted on the empire as well. There is much to peel, like a plump pomegranate. But a few hours of a break day will never yield credible answers, not in the same place and not when one is only resting the senses after six days monitoring global jousting and dithering over the climate crisis and its solutions. The meet takes place over two weeks and in the middle is a break. Official negotiations cease.Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Or COP29, like shorthand for a 29cop out, understandably the feeling of a constant shortfall given the size of the crisis the world has yet to truly confront. But because the meeting is in Azerbaijan, presided over by a designate chosen by what many call today a petro-state, conference proceedings tended to be more exhausting than usual. Hence the short-lived enjoyment of a few hours with nothing better to do but to take a break from human conceits and frailties and to putter instead inside the walls of old Baku. There is something about walking on this old town’s cobblestones slowly, the geometric ground hardened and polished from centuries of footfall. The echoes linger in the mind because memory in this place goes way back, when Zoroastrianism configured the world of fire worshippers, predating or proceeding from this or that god while helping give shape to spiritual cosmologies today. In Baku the streets are narrow and winding, curved like the long spout of a tall teapot, but also inclined, many with steep steps. The blue sky is broken by shades of sandstone, marble, and granite, punctuated by trees that look weary and antediluvian even when young. Baku’s walls are turreted and curved and despite the proliferation of small shops, each giving you the best price in the entire world, something compels you to slow down and gaze.And then you see the extensions. Left to right and back, from all angles.It is a standout Islamic architectural element, projecting an oriel window, protruding like a balcony often enclosed with carved wood, many times with latticework on the upper floors of a building. My goodness they are beautiful. Sometimes they overlook a courtyard, but from the streets one sees more of the extended loggia from where, behind curtains or filigreed windows a resident is provided privacy to survey public scenery below.is often cantilevered and many might seem a vernacular addition, but the rendering, the incredible craftsmanship of carpentry utilized to produce the balconies in old Baku give everything a generic, organic feel. If the apartment was a person’s face theEvery now and then, the place reminds you of the comets it hosted, through public sculptures that honor the best of its citizens. I saw many but I remember the names of two. Yusuf Heydar Mammadaliyev, scientist. Aliega Vahid, poet. Maybe it is a reminder, just before diving headlong once more into the climate negotiations, that for life to thrive it will require both kinds of mind and heart. Inside the Old City are tombs, one with kinky boots, that to the sensitive might raise notions of impermanence. There are minarets and arches and the 12And then it was time to head back. The Venetian traveler Marco Polo noted in the 14century the oil Baku exported to other nations, and along the way to the conference venue on Istiqlal Aliyev, there is always a stretch that shows you the Caspian Sea and then briefly patches of nodding donkeys on the near side, oil wells and oil pumps with heads nodding and going down and pistol-pulling up and pumping new supplies of petrol to feed a global machine thirsty for more fossil capital, fueling affluence and wars and supercharging storms.
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