08:00-09:00. Breakfast at hotel.

10:00. Transfer to the Old City.

Dated as far back as the 6th century and surrounded by fortress walls, Old City part hosts old monuments such as Shirvanshah’s palace (15th–16th centuries), Maiden tower, Gasimbey bathhouse (15th century) etc. First stop will be Shirvanshah’s palace, where kings’ private rooms, palace mosque, divankhana and bath-rooms will be breathtaking experience to dive into history. Second stop is Mysterious Maiden Tower, which you will be allowed to climb to the top and have amazing Baku view. Information will be provided about history of buildings, ancient mosques and trading squares during the walk. Built on a site inhabited since the Palaeolithic period, the Old City of Baku reveals evidence of Zoroastrian, Sasanian, Arabic, Persian, Shirvani, Ottoman, and Russian presence in cultural continuity. The Old City has preserved much of its 12th-century defensive walls. The 12th-century Maiden Tower is built over earlier structures dating from the 7th to 6th centuries BC, and the 15th-century Shirvanshahs’ Palace is one of the pearls of Azerbaijan’s architecture. Old city is located at the center of Baku city.

14:00. Lunch at local restaurant.

15:00. Transfer back to hotel. (free time)

08:00-09:00. Breakfast at hotel.

10:00. Transfer to Haydar Aliyev Cultural Center.

Haydar Aliyev center is located close to the city center. By visiting this center visitors will have a unique chance to see fascinating architectural design and different exhibitions inside the building, which demonstrate different periods of the history of Azerbaijan, related to different areas of Azerbaijani culture and history, traditional clothes and old coins. Designed by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid Haydar Aliyev cultural center is famous with its distinctive architecture and flowing, curved style that eschews sharp angles. Nominated for awards several awards, building hosts a variety of cultural programs. Construction of the building lasted for 5 years from 2007-2012.The center is named for Haydar Aliyev, the leader of Soviet-era Azerbaijan and the president of Azerbaijan Republic.

12:00. Transfer to the Museum of Modern Art.

The museum focuses on the second half of the twentieth century and contains over 800 works by notable Azerbaijani painters and sculptors, particularly avant garde art of the 1960s and 1970s, including Rasim Babayev, Ashraf Murad, Gennady Brejatjuk, Fazil Najafov, Mamed Mustafaev, Aga Houssejnov, Ali Ibadullaev, Mir-Nadir Zeynalov, Farhad Halilov, Darvin Velibekov, Eldar Mammadov, Mikail Abdurahmanov, Museib Amirov, Mahmud Rustamov, Huseyn Hagverdi, Eliyar Alimirzayev, Rashad Babayev and Altay Sadikh-zadeh. There are also non-Azerbaijani modern masterworks by Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, and Marc Chagall from private collectors.

Exhibitions of Azerbaijani photographers such as Elnur Babayev, Fakhriya Mammadova, Ilkin Huseynov, Rena Efendi, Sergei Khrustalev, Sitara Ibrahimova, Tahmina Mammadova are often held in the museum.

The museum includes a children’s fine arts department, a video hall, a cafe, a restaurant, a separate hall for private exhibitions, a library, and a bookstore with materials pertaining to world art, architecture and sculpture.

13:00-14:00. Lunch

14:00. Transfer to the Carpet Museum.

The museum was established in 1967 and was initially located in the Juma Mosque in Icheri Sheher. The mosque was built in the 15th century and renovated in the 19th century. Plans to move the collection to a new purpose-built venue have been in the works since 2010 when Azerbaijani carpets were proclaimed “a Masterpiece of Intangible Heritage” by UNESCO. The new building was due to open in late 2012 and was visited by President Ilham Aliyev in September 2013. The museum opened on 26 August 2014. In April 2014 the museum was renamed the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum, dropping its much longer official title.

The collection of the museum includes over 10,000 items of ceramics, metal works of the 14th century, jewellery from the Bronze Age, carpets and carpet items from the 17th-20th centuries, national garments and embroidery, and applied art works of the Modern Age.The museum organizes public lectures and study courses on carpets and applied arts. It has a book store selling books on Azerbaijani crafts and carpet art.The museum also holds a permanent collection from the Shusha Museum of History, from the city of Shusha, which was looted after occupation by Armenian troops in 1992. Some of the exhibited items of the Shusha museum were saved when the director of the museum moved out 600 carpets before occupation. They are now displayed at the museum in an exhibition titled “Burned Culture”.

15:30. Transfer to a hotel and free time.

08:00-09:00. Breakfast at hotel.

09:30. Transfer to Yanardag.

Yanar Dag meaning “burning mountain” is a natural gas fire which blazes continuously on a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula on the Caspian Sea near Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan (a country which itself is known as “the Land of Fire“). Flames jet into the air 3 metres (9.8 ft) from a thin, porous sandstone layer.Administratively, Yanar Dag belongs to Absheron District of Azerbaijan.

The reason offered for the Yanar Dag fires is the result of hydrocarbon gases emanating from below the earth’s surface. Apart from Yanar Dag, the most famous site of such a fire is the Fire Temple near Baku, off the Greater Caucasus, which is a religious site known as ateshgahs, meaning temples of fire. It has also been inferred that such fires could be the cause for “thermal metamorphism.

Like the flames of Yanar Dag, the Ateshgah flame was a manifestation of the seepage of natural gas from porous strata, but the natural flow at Ateshgah ceased some time ago and the flames seen there now are fed from a gas main for touristic effect – whereas those at Yanar Dag are still entirely natural.

10:30. Transfer to Ateshgah Temple.

Based on Persian and Indian inscriptions, the temple was used as a Hindu, Sikh, and Zoroastrian place of worship. “Atash” (آتش) is the Persian word for fire. The pentagonal complex, which has a courtyard surrounded by cells for monks and a tetrapillar-altar in the middle, was built during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was abandoned in the late 19th century, probably due to the dwindling of the Indian population in the area. The natural “eternal flame” went out in 1969, after nearly a century of exploitation of petroleum and gas in the area, but is now lit by gas piped from the nearby city.

The Baku Ateshgah was a pilgrimage and philosophical centre of Zoroastrians from Northwestern Indian Subcontinent, who were involved in trade with the Caspian area via the famous “Grand Trunk Road“. The four holy elements of their belief were: ateshi (fire), badi (air), abi (water), and heki (earth). The temple ceased to be a place of worship after 1883 with the installation of petroleum plants (industry) at Surakhany. The complex was turned into a museum in 1975. The annual number of visitors to the museum is 15,000.

The Temple of Fire “Ateshgah” was nominated for List of World Heritage Sites, UNESCO in 1998 by Gulnara Mehmandarova — president of Azerbaijan Committee of International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). It was also featured on an episode of Globe Trekker.

11:45. Transfer to Gala Village.

Forty kilometers from Baku there is Gala, the well-known open-air historical and ethnographic museum. The museum, founded in 2008 at an archaeological site located in the same-name village, is dedicated to the history of the Absheron Peninsula. There, you can see how the Azerbaijani lived, what they ate and drank and how they managed a household over the period from the XVI to XIX centuries.

The territory of 1.2 ha hosts old-time houses – portable tents made of animal skins, subsequently replaced by stone and beaten cobworks with cupolas, an ancient blacksmith shop, market, pottery, bakery, threshing mill and other interesting medieval buildings. You can see, touch, and take picture of all of them. You can even try to bake bread in a common oven, weave a carpet, muddy in pottery or feed camels, horses and donkeys, peacefully resting in their stalls. Many monuments and exhibits were brought to the Gala Museum from different corners of the Absheron Peninsula; they were renovated or fully reconstructed. All together, they help to get an idea of the life of the medieval people in Azerbaijan.

13:30. Lunch at local restaurant in Gala village.

14:30. Transfer to Mardakan Castles.

The castle was built in the XIV century by the son of  Major Manuchohr Axsitan. The fortress of Mardakan was awarded the IAccean’s brilliant victory over the enemy. The castle was used as a shelter and guardian of feudal lords. The height of the tower is 22 meters, the thickness is 2.10 meters below and 1.60 meters above. The inner courtyard is 28×25. The tower is divided into 5 yards.

Circular Mardakan fortress. The locals call this fortress the Shikh fortress. The height of the tower is 12.5 meters, with 3 rims. It is clear from the article on the fortress that it was built by architect Abdulmajid Masud in 1232.

15:00. Transfer back to hotel. (free time)

08:00-09:00. Breakfast at hotel.

09:30. Transfer to Gobustan National Park.

Gobustan National Park, officially Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape, is a hill and mountain site occupying the southeast end of the Greater Caucasus mountain ridge in Azerbaijan, mainly in the basin of Jeyrankechmaz River, between the rivers Pirsagat and Sumgait. It is located west of the settlement of Gobustan, about 40 miles (64 km) southwest of the centre of Baku on the west bank of the Caspian Sea.

The territory of Gobustan is cut up with numerous, sometimes rather deep ravines. That is a suggested origin of the Gobustan geographical name.

In 1966 Gobustan was declared a national historical landmark of Azerbaijan in an attempt to preserve the ancient carvings, relics, mud volcanoes and gas-stones in the region. The mountains Boyukdash, Kichikdash, Jingirdag, and the Yazili hill were taken under legal government protection. These mountains are located near the Caspian Sea, in the southeast part of Gobustan.

In 2007 Gobustan was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site considered to be of “outstanding universal value” for the quality and density of its rock art engravings, for the substantial evidence the collection of rock art images presents for hunting, fauna, flora and lifestyles in pre-historic times and for the cultural continuity between prehistoric and medieval times that the site reflects.

12:00. Excursion to Mud Volcanos.

Azerbaijan and its Caspian coastline are home to nearly 400 mud volcanoes, more than half the total throughout the world. In 2001, one mud volcano 15 kilometers from Baku made world headlines when it suddenly started ejecting flames 15 meters high. Gobustan mud volcanoes were included as one of 50 natural wonders by CNN Travel. Many geologists as well as locals and international mud tourists trek to such places as the Firuz Crater, Gobustan, Salyan and end up happily covered in mud which is thought to have medicinal qualities.

On the average, every twenty years or so, a mud volcano may explode with great force in Gobustan, shooting flames hundreds of metres into the sky, and depositing tonnes of mud on the surrounding area.

The appearance of the Zoroastrian religion in Azerbaijan almost 2,000 years ago is closely connected with these geological phenomena, and Azerbaijan’s etymology – Land of the Eternal Fire derives from its Zoroastrian history.

14:00-15:00. Lunch at fish restaurant.

15:00. Transfer to Bibi-Heybat Mosque.

The Bibi-Heybat Mosque is a historical mosque in Baku, Azerbaijan. The existing structure, built in the 1990s, is a recreation of the mosque with the same name built in the 13th century by Shirvanshah Farrukhzad II Ibn Ahsitan II, which was completely destroyed by the Bolsheviks in 1936.

The Bibi-Heybat Mosque includes the tomb of Ukeyma Khanum (a descendant of Muhammad), and today is the spiritual center for the Muslims of the region and one of the major monuments of Islamic architecture in Azerbaijan.

It is locally known as “the mosque of Fatima”, which is what Alexandre Dumas called it when he described the mosque during his visit in the 1840s.

15:45. Transfer back to Hotel. (free time)

08:00-09:00. Breakfast at hotel.

• Getting ready for Check Out.
• Transfer to the airport.

Excluded:

• Lunch
• Dinner
• Personal expenses
• Airfare
• Visa
• Insurance

Included:

• Accommodation
• Transfer to/from airport
• Transportation
• Entrance fees to museums
• Guide service