Tour guides Azerbaijan

5 ideas for guided tours in Azerbaijan

• Baku

  

  This city doesn’t really follow rules. You walk a few blocks and something shifts — old and new cross paths without warning.

  Start with Icherisheher, the old town. Narrow lanes, stone walls, bits of silence. The Shirvanchah Palace stands there, quietly detailed. The Maiden Tower, too — climb it if you want. The Caspian shows up at the top.

  Elsewhere, there’s the Allée des Martyrs. Bright lights. Harsh angles. A walk by the sea that remembers names.

  By night, Fountain Square fills with noise. Tables, steam, music drifting. Plates of plov, pastries, and no real plan.

• Gobustan Reserve

  

  You don’t expect time to feel so close. But in Gobustan, it’s carved right into the stone.

  The ground shifts into strange hills. Wind-scoured. Dry. Walk slowly. Shapes appear: animals, people, hands raised.

  The Boyukdash rock holds most of them. Hunters. Dancers. Stories scratched in long before words.

  And around all that — old tombs, fragments, remains of whoever came first. Nothing feels staged. It just is.

• Astara

  

  South, near the border with Iran, lies Astara. Between forest and sea. One side — the Caspian. The other — mountains leaning in.

  Go into the Khazar Reserve. The air shifts there. Trees, rivers, waterfalls without noise.

  A little further, near the village, the Astara park stretches out — marshes, birds, slow water. Life moving at its own pace.

• Shaki City

  

  Shaki holds onto its past. The Palace of the Shaki Khans rises from the slope — carved wood, painted glass, a sense of detail that doesn’t shout.

  You move through rooms built to impress. They still do.

  Outside, in the old village of Nukha, the fortress remains — long stone walls, still standing after centuries.

  The market is another rhythm. Colors, spices, things you don’t recognize but want to try. And if you need quiet, Maraza Park isn’t far.

• Quba

  

  Quba, in the north, sits by the Qudyalçay River. The city folds together old traces — facades painted in soft tones, mosques with long shadows, brickwork half hidden.

  You might pass the poet’s tomb — Mirza Fatali Akhundov — or reach the Khans’ palace. Time settles on both.

  Further in, the Krasnaya Sloboda village. Jewish families have lived here since the 1700s. The quiet feels rooted.

  Nature surrounds it all. Waterfalls fall in the Tenghi Canyon. Paths wind through Altyagach National Park. And in winter, Shahdag wakes up — ski tracks drawn into the slope.