Palace of the Shirvanshahs

Interesting facts

The main palace building originally had 52 rooms, 27 on the ground floor and 25 above, linked by three narrow spiral staircases.

An inscription in the family tomb names its architect as Muhammad Ali.

The family tomb was built in 1435–36 for Khalilullah I's mother, Bike Khanum, and his son; excavations in 1946 found burials beneath its floor.

The eastern portal, known as Murad's Gate, is dated by its inscription to 1585–86, during the Ottoman occupation of Baku.

The complex had its own underground bathhouse, with a soap room and chambers of different temperatures, and a covered water reservoir called an ovdan.

The palace displays the Bayil Stones, carved slabs with reliefs and inscriptions recovered from the 13th-century Bayil Castle.

Excavations in 1945 revealed remains of an 8th–9th-century residential quarter lying beneath the palace grounds.

The small Keygubad mosque beside the Bakuvi mausoleum, built around 1400, was destroyed by fire in 1918.

Why it is worth it

The Palace of the Shirvanshahs crowns the highest point of Baku's walled Old City, a compact ensemble of stone buildings from the fifteenth century. The Shirvanshahs were the long-lived dynasty of Shirvan, and under Ibrahim I they moved their capital to Baku after an earthquake devastated their old seat at Shamakhi. Building on the hill is traditionally dated from 1411; inscriptions on the family tomb and on the minaret of the palace mosque name his son Khalilullah I and give dates in the 1430s and 1440s.

The complex steps down the slope in terraces. On the upper level stand the two-storey palace building, organised around an octagonal domed hall, and the Divankhana, an elegant octagonal pavilion set inside an arcaded courtyard and entered through a portal of finely carved stone. Its purpose is still debated: some see it as a hall of audience or justice, others as an intended mausoleum. Lower down are the Shah's mosque with its minaret, the domed burial vault of the Shirvanshah family, the mausoleum of the court scholar Seyid Yahya Bakuvi, the remains of a bathhouse and a gate built in the reign of the Ottoman sultan Murad III.

The architecture belongs to the Shirvan-Absheron school, and it is restrained rather than lavish: plain cubic volumes and domes, relieved by concentrated carving around doorways, with muqarnas niches, geometric patterns and bands of Arabic inscription. Historians also disagree about how much of the site was truly a royal residence and how much a memorial ensemble around the tomb of a Sufi saint, and wandering between the terraces it is easy to see why both readings are possible.

The palace went through hard centuries. After the Safavid conquest of 1501 it fell into neglect, it was damaged when Peter the Great's forces bombarded Baku in 1723, and in the nineteenth century the Russian military used it as a storehouse. Restorations in the 1930s and again from the 1990s saved it, and the complex has been a museum reserve since 1964. Together with the Maiden Tower and the city walls, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000; the palace also appears on the Azerbaijani ten-manat banknote.

Getting there

The palace is inside Icherisheher, the walled Old City of central Baku. The nearest metro station, İçərişəhər, is roughly a five-minute walk away; vehicle access inside the walls is restricted, so the last stretch is on foot. Heydar Aliyev International Airport (GYD) is about 22 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

The Palace of the Shirvanshahs is a 15th-century palace built by the Shirvanshahs and described by UNESCO as "one of the pearls of Azerbaijan's architecture". It is located in the Inner City of Baku, Azerbaijan and, together with the Maiden Tower, forms an ensemble of historic monuments inscribed under the UNESCO World Heritage List of Historical Monuments. The complex contains the main building of the palace, Divanhane, the burial-vaults, the shah's mosque with a minaret, Seyid Yahya Bakuvi's mausoleum, south of the palace, a portal in the east, Murad's gate, a reservoir and the remnants of a bath house. Earlier, there was an ancient mosque, next to the mausoleum. There is still ruins of the bath to the west of the tomb.

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Palace of the Shirvanshahs

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia