Private Baku City Tour by Car – Old City & Modern Baku

Your driver collects you at your hotel at the time you choose. There is no meeting point to find and no group to wait for — the day starts when you are ready.

Nizami Street is the pedestrian spine of central Baku: a kilometre of oil-boom mansions, department stores and cafés running down to Fountains Square. It is the easiest place to feel the everyday rhythm of the city, and a good first stop while you are still getting your bearings. Your driver drops you at one end and waits at the other, so you simply walk through.

The walled Old City is where Baku began. Inside are caravanserais that once housed traders off the Silk Road, hammams, mosques and lanes barely wide enough for two people. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and still a residential quarter, which is why it feels lived-in rather than preserved.

The Palace of the Shirvanshahs is the largest monument of the Shirvan-Absheron architectural school — a 15th-century complex of courtyards containing the royal residence, a mosque, a burial vault and the mausoleum of the court scholar Seyid Yahya Bakuvi. The interior is open to visit; the ticket is paid at the entrance.

The Maiden Tower is the emblem of the city and its greatest unsolved question — its date, its builder and its purpose are all still argued over. You can go inside and climb to the roof for a view across the Old City rooftops to the bay, or simply photograph it from the square below.

Around the corner from the palace, the Museum of Miniature Books holds thousands of tiny volumes gathered from dozens of countries — the only collection of its kind anywhere. A short stop, and an unexpectedly charming one.

On the seafront, Baku Boulevard runs for kilometres beside the Caspian. Here you find Little Venice, a small network of canals you can cross by gondola for 5 AZN, and the Baku Ferris Wheel at the far end. Driving between the two ends of the promenade saves the better part of an hour compared with walking it.

The Azerbaijan Carpet Museum is impossible to miss — the building itself is shaped like a rolled-up carpet. Inside is the world's largest collection of Azerbaijani carpets, arranged by weaving region, alongside the tools and dyes used to make them. Carpet weaving here is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, and this is the one museum that explains why.

The last stop climbs to Highland Park, the terrace above the city. From the railing you see the whole sweep of the bay, the Old City walls below, and the Flame Towers standing directly behind you — the single best panorama in Baku and the photograph most people take home.

On request, the tour can include the Heydar Aliyev Center, Zaha Hadid's white wave of a building and the most photographed piece of modern architecture in Azerbaijan. It sits away from the centre, so it is a stop that really only makes sense with a private car. Mention it when you book and we will build in the extra time.

The tour ends back at your hotel — or anywhere else in the city you would rather be dropped, such as a restaurant on the Boulevard.