Walled City of Baku with the Shirvanshahs' Palace and Maiden Tower
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How it came to be
Icherisheher, the inner city of Baku on the south side of the Apsheron Peninsula on the Caspian, has been lived in since the Palaeolithic and shaped by Zoroastrian, Sasanian, Arab, Persian, Shirvani, Ottoman and Russian influence. By the 8th and 9th centuries it was busy with craftsmen and traders.
Much of its 12th-century wall survives, along with the 12th-century Maiden Tower. When the Shirvanshahs moved their seat from Shamakhi to Baku in the 15th century, their palace was built on the highest point of the inner city. The Mohammed Mosque dates from 1078.
Russia occupied Baku in 1806, and with the oil boom from the late 19th century the city spread beyond the walls. The inner city was inscribed in 2000 and was on the danger list from 2003 to 2009.
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