Baku Museums Tour

The Azerbaijan Carpet Museum presents different schools and techniques from around the entire country, as well as covering various historical states and the development of carpet weaving. Today, there are more than 14,000 exhibits, including rare carpets, exquisite jewelry, clothing, embroidery, delicate glass pieces, wood and felt. The first floor of the museum has flat-weave carpets and various examples of applied arts, including bags and saddles for horses. The second floor is pile carpets from the different regions in Azerbaijan, showing off the unique patterns and designs of this country. The third floor is all about modern designers, the history of the Carpet Museum, and a children’s room.The Carpet Museum is open Tuesday through Friday from 10:00-18:00, and on Saturday and Sunday from 10:00-20:00. The museum is closed on Mondays.

The Museum of Miniature Books, located within the old city - Icheri Sheher, is included in the Guinness Book of Records as the museum with the largest number of miniature books. The creator of the museum, Zarifa Salahova has amassed this unique collection over the past 30 years. The only museum of miniature books in the world opened its doors on April 2, 2002. Today, the museum holds a unique collection of over 5,600 books published in 66 countries around the world.

Heydar Aliyev Center is considered as is one of the main attractions for tourists and has also become a symbol of modern Azerbaijan and modern Baku. Zaha Hadid, the author of the building’s design, is a worldwide recognized architect and the winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize and Design of the Year award for her design of Heydar Aliyev Center. The overall shape of the building resembles a wave-like ascension from the ground towards the sky followed by gradual descent down to the earth.An internationally recognized architectural marvel, Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center displays a curved modern style. Designed by the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, the elegant building stands 74 m (243 ft) in the middle of a square and houses a museum, a gallery hall, and a grand auditorium.

The building itself is a cultural monument: the luxurious palace was constructed at the end of the 19th century by Gaji Zeynalabdin Tagiev, a well-known philanthropist and patron of the arts. After discovering oil, he became the richest man in Russia, and he built his massive palace to live in with his second wife. However, when Soviet forces moved in to Baku in 1920, he fled, and his palace was confiscated as state property and turned into the museum that it is today. The Azerbaijan National History Museum first opened to the public in 1921, and since then, over 300,000 artifacts have become part of the collection. Among them are important documents that shaped the history of Azerbaijan, weapons, jewelry, clothing, exquisite handmade carpets, old books, and much more. The whole first floor is dedicated to more ancient history, featuring items found on archaeological digs and on the floor of the Caspian Sea.

The Museum was initiated by the First Lady, Mehriban Aliyeva, and opened to the public in 2009. The Museum has, as it is defined, a ‘moving abstract structure’ thanks to its bright white walls and open spaces where no walls or corridors stop the visual flow, developing a multidimensional perspective to each exhibited work. Baku’s Museum of Modern Art, conveniently located close to the city’s business hub, has a collection of over 800 pieces, most of which are avant-garde in nature and represent Azerbaijan’s brightest painters and sculptors of the last 70 years. Here, you can gaze at the works of artists such as Rasim Babayev, Ashraf Murad and Fazil Najafov, who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s with their paintings and sculptures inspired by the colours and climate of the Absheron.

Archeology and Ethnography Museum located in front of the tower gates Gosha Gala Gapisi in the Icherisheher [Old City], is open on weekdays from 11am to 17pm for free to all lovers of history. The museum’s exhibits allow to see a complete picture of the primitive people’s camps, living areas, settlements belonging to pastoralists and farmers, as well as gravestones, early urban culture, historical and material culture of the ancient states.