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Baku sits 28 meters below sea level on the western shore of the Caspian Sea -- the lowest national capital city on earth, in a country technically landlocked because the Caspian is a lake, not an ocean. The wind here is not incidental: locals call it the City of Winds, and gusts regularly exceed 100 km/h in winter, driven off the open water onto the flat peninsula where the old city stands. Oil has shaped Baku for centuries -- natural gas seeps at Yanar Dag, a hillside 25 kilometers north, have been burning continuously for at least 65 years.

The Icheri Sheher, the Old City, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site containing structures from the 12th century onward.

The Maiden Tower, built in stages between the 5th and 12th centuries, remains one of Azerbaijan's most distinctive landmarks -- its purpose still debated between defensive fortification, Zoroastrian fire temple, and astronomical observatory. The Palace of the Shirvanshahs, built between the 13th and 16th centuries, anchors the upper quarter of the old city. Outside the two-kilometer walls, the oil boom of the late 19th century funded a ring of ornate European-style mansions along Istiqlaliyyat Street that earned the city its Paris of the East nickname.