Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre: Zaha Hadid’s Most Accomplished Building

In 2014, the Design Museum in London gave its Design of the Year award to the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre in Baku. The award went to the building, not to whoever commissioned it. That distinction matters: the centre is named after Azerbaijan’s third president, and acknowledging the extraordinary quality of the architecture while maintaining some critical distance from the political context of the naming is the appropriate approach.

Zaha Hadid designed it; the building opened in 2012. It is a continuous white surface that flows from ground to roof without visible seams, free of sharp edges or corners, folding and unfolding into covered spaces and landscaped grounds. From certain angles it looks liquid. From a distance it looks like something that shouldn’t be standing. Up close, it looks like what it is: a building that rejected every architectural convention about what a building needs to look like, and succeeded.

It is worth a trip to Baku specifically to see it.

What’s Inside

The complex contains a conference hall, a museum, and an exhibition centre. The museum covers Azerbaijan’s history from prehistoric settlements through the medieval Shirvanshah period, the 1918-1920 Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (the first parliamentary democracy in the Muslim-majority world), Soviet rule, and independence in 1991. The chronological organisation is competent and the exhibits are better designed than most post-Soviet national museums.

The exhibition hall hosts changing contemporary art and design shows; quality varies by programme, so check what’s showing before visiting. The auditorium seats around 1,000 and hosts concerts, theatre, and opera attended primarily by Baku’s own cultural audience.

Admission to the museum section runs around 15 AZN ($9 USD). Photography permitted.

The Old City

Icheri Sheher (the UNESCO-listed walled Old City) is the essential contrast to the new architecture. The 15th-century Palace of the Shirvanshahs, the pre-Islamic Maiden Tower (whose original purpose genuinely remains debated), and the narrow lanes of a medieval city compressed into 20 hectares. The carpet museum on the waterfront just outside the walls is worth two hours – Azerbaijan has one of the world’s most technically sophisticated carpet-weaving traditions, and the museum makes the regional patterns comprehensible rather than just decorative.

Eating

Azerbaijani cuisine draws from Persian, Russian, and Central Asian traditions in a combination that is distinctively its own. Lamb, walnuts, pomegranate, saffron, and fresh herbs appear constantly.

Firuze in the Old City serves traditional Azerbaijani food in a renovated caravanserai. The piti (lamb and chickpea soup served in individual clay pots) is authentic and excellent.

Mugham Club near the seafront does live traditional Azerbaijani music (mugham) with dinner on certain evenings. The music is modal and improvisatory with a specific melancholic quality. The food is secondary to the performance.

Practical Notes

Best visiting seasons: April through June, and September through October. July-August is very hot (35-40C) with coastal humidity. Currency is the Azerbaijani manat (AZN); cards are widely accepted in Baku.