Baku

Baku is the capital of the land of fire, and the fire is not a metaphor: gas seeps have burned on these hillsides for millennia — Zoroastrians built temples to them —, the first oil boom built the mansions, and the Flame Towers now play the old element back in glass and light over the bay. Below them, the walled Icherisheher keeps its lanes and its Maiden Tower, whose legends outnumber its floors, and the Caspian breeze arrives on schedule — 'city of winds' is the oldest of Baku's names and the most reliably enforced.

The sensible traveller circles the Old City's walls in the morning, climbs the Maiden Tower for the bay, and reads the oil-boom mansions' facades like a ledger of sudden fortunes; walks the Boulevard at dusk with tea in armudu glasses, the waisted cups that keep the top sip hot; gives Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center its hour of impossible curves; and takes the peninsula day trip: Ateshgah's fire temple and Yanar Dag, the hillside that has burned continuously for as long as anyone can prove.

The Guide's honesty: the khazri wind is real and reorders umbrellas — a jacket outranks elegance on the Boulevard, though Baku does dress up: pack one smart outfit —; taxis run honestly by app; the mud volcanoes at Gobustan are worth the bumpy last mile, ideally paired with the petroglyphs; and tea refuses to be rushed here — with jam, with conversation, with the sea in front. The Guide recommends surrendering by the second glass.