Buildings of Baku

Our neighborhood. A couple of typical-looking buildings in the center of the city. This corner is just a few blocks from our apartment. This is the kind of thing we walk past every day and have grown used to despite the fact that it looks unlike anything we've lived around in America. The rest of the city doesn't look like this, but the center does, about six by five blocks worth of Old World European-style charm...
More typical buildings in our neighborhood.
Prestige is a jewelry store, if you were wondering.

This mall has five floors of retail space but only the first two have anything - even the second floor isn't fully occupied, and there are already a few places out of business. I guess Azeris prefer to do their shopping in hot, overcrowded pedestrian underpasses, and when you can get a donar for 30 cents every 10 yards, who needs a food court?

 To the left is the "mall" in the center of the city.

Below is a more standard Baku shopping area. This is part of the four-block pedestrian walkway through the center of town.

If you look closely, you can see Shanon sneaking into the picture.



Milli Bank Building. This is the home of the Azerbaijan Treasury. It's not only the most modern building in the city, it's pretty much the only skyscraper around.

Another view of the Milli Bank Building. You can see the reflection of the sun on the building to the side - a very cool effect but when I first noticed it, walking through it on the sidewalk, it took me a while to figure out where it was coming from.

The Government House. To me this looks like the kind of place the KGB used to torture people, but maybe that's just too many spy novels. This is a majestic building right by the sea, but it doesn't have any apparent function. It's probably just an old building without any heat that the government doesn't have enough money to renovate for a useful purpose. To the left is the Hotel Azerbaijan, which looks more horrific when you're up close to it.

The Carpet Museum. This place is one block from our apartment, but we haven't been inside yet. Apparently you need a guide for this place, someone to interpret the meaning of the designs on the carpets - otherwise it's just a musty old place filled with hanging rugs.

The Republican Palace. I'm not sure what goes on here - it looks like a movie theater, but it's not. It's not really a palace, either. Yet another mystery.
The Old Train Station. This is one of the coolest buildings in Baku, but it's not used anymore either. It forms one side of the 28th of May Plaza, which is one of the big outdoor markets in the city. This photograph was taken on a good day - when it's cloudy, it looks gray and depressing and hardly worth mentioning as a landmark.



In Baku, some buildings are going up...

and some are coming down.


This one actually collapsed, it wasn't torn down. Somebody was killed by the fall, which has led to wild speculation about a creative murder, or perhaps a cover-up [the guy was already dead when the building came down, goes this version]. I seriously doubt anyone here has it together enough to pull off something like that.


I'll be adding more pictures as I get them, so check back from time to time...