Baku, Shirvan & Central Azerbaijan

The Absheron peninsula has been inhabited since prehistory, as the rock carvings of Gobustan — hunters, boats, dancers and animals cut into the rocks over many thousands of years — show. Natural gas vents that burned on the hillsides drew fire-worshippers, and a Roman legion left an inscription at Gobustan in the 1st century AD, the easternmost Latin inscription known.

In the Middle Ages this was the realm of the Shirvanshahs, a dynasty that ruled Shirvan for centuries from Shamakhi. Repeated earthquakes pushed them towards Baku, where they built their palace in the 15th century inside the walled town around the Maiden Tower. Shirvan became a Safavid province, then, after Persian power waned, the Baku and Shamakhi khanates, until Russia absorbed them in the early 19th century. Shamakhi remained the provincial capital until an earthquake in 1859 moved the seat to Baku.

Oil transformed everything. Baku's boom from the 1870s drew the Nobel brothers, the Rothschilds and local millionaires such as Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, and built the grand facades outside the old walls. In Soviet times Baku was the Union's major oil city, and Sumqayit was built as a chemical city; the anti-Armenian violence there in February 1988 was one of the first episodes of the Karabakh conflict. On 20 January 1990 Soviet troops entering Baku killed well over a hundred civilians, a day remembered as Black January. Since the 1990s the offshore fields of the Caspian have paid for a new Baku of glass towers, seaside parks and international events.

Baku has always been the country's most cosmopolitan place: Azerbaijanis, Russians, Jews, Armenians, Persians and Europeans lived side by side in the oil era, and something of that mix survives in the city's Russian-speaking intelligentsia, its jazz tradition and its secular, café-going habits. Villages on the Absheron peninsula are more conservative and known for their gardens, saffron and figs.

Mountainous Shirvan has its own identities. Lahij's people are Tats, who speak an Iranian language, and the village is known for its copper workshops, carpets and leather. Basqal in Ismayilli district is a centre of kelaghayi, the silk headscarf whose making is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, and Ivanovka, also in Ismayilli, is a village of Molokans, Russian religious dissenters who settled there in the 19th century. Shamakhi gave its name to a famous tradition of female dancers and to a carpet school.

The Kura plain is the country's farming heartland, where life is conservative and religious observance somewhat stronger than in Baku. Novruz is celebrated everywhere with bonfires, and Goychay holds a pomegranate festival each autumn.

Greater Baku, with more than two million people, holds around a quarter of the country's population; Sumqayit, just to the north, is the second city of Azerbaijan, and Mingachevir, the reservoir and power town on the Kura, has about 100,000 people. Shirvan, Yevlakh, Salyan, Shamakhi and Ismayilli are the other main centres.

The economy is oil and gas, services and government in Baku; heavy industry in Sumqayit; cotton, grain, fruit and livestock on the Kura plain; and vines, orchards and tourism in the Shamakhi and Ismayilli hills. Many rural families depend on relatives working in Baku or Russia.

Baku's day starts late and runs late: breakfast of tea and cheese, long working lunches, and evenings on the seafront boulevard, where families stroll until midnight in summer. Weekends mean the Absheron beaches or a drive to Shamakhi. Current issues include traffic, the cost of housing, demolition of older neighbourhoods for new development, and the tight control of politics and media.

Baku's kitchen is the national one at its most elaborate. Plov comes in many forms, including shah plov, and dushbara, tiny meat dumplings in broth, is a Baku favourite. Absheron's gardens produce saffron, figs, olives and grapes, and Novruz brings trays of pakhlava, diamond-shaped layered pastry with nuts, shekerbura, crescent pastries filled with nuts and sugar, and gogal, flaky spiced buns.

The Caspian supplies kutum and other fish, grilled or smoked and served with narsharab, the sour pomegranate sauce; sturgeon, once a staple, is now critically endangered and scarce. Kebab houses in every district grill lamb, liver and vegetables over vine wood.

In the hills, Shamakhi and Ismayilli are wine country: the Madrasa red grape is a Shamakhi speciality, and several modern wineries operate in both districts. The Kura plain grows melons, pomegranates — Goychay's are the most famous — and grain, and Molokan Ivanovka is known for its dairy and honey.

Baku's old city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, holds the Maiden Tower, the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, caravanserais and bathhouses in a maze of lanes; outside the walls come oil-boom mansions, the seafront boulevard, the Heydar Aliyev Center and the three Flame Towers above the bay, lit up at night.

On Absheron, Yanar Dag is a hillside of gas that burns continuously, the Ateshgah of Surakhani is a fortified fire temple, and medieval castle towers stand in Mardakan and Ramana. South of the city, Gobustan's rock art reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, lies close to the mud volcanoes, low grey cones that gurgle and occasionally erupt.

Inland, Shamakhi has its rebuilt Juma Mosque, founded in the 8th century, and the Yeddi Gumbez tombs of the khans, with the Pirgulu observatory and forests in the hills above. The Diri Baba mausoleum, built into a cliff at Maraza, lies on the road from Baku. Lahij, reached up a gorge from Ismayilli, has cobbled lanes and coppersmiths' workshops.

Further west and south, the Kura river towns — Mingachevir with its reservoir, Yevlakh, Sabirabad and Salyan — lead down to the river's delta, where Shirvan National Park protects gazelle herds, and the lakes around it draw flamingos and other wintering birds.