Walled City of Baku with the Shirvanshah's Palace and Maiden Tower

Oil derricks and glass towers now ring Baku, but at its heart the Icheri Sheher keeps much of its 12th-century wall. Within stands the enigmatic Maiden Tower, raised in the 12th century over structures thought to reach back to the 7th-6th centuries BC, and the 15th-century palace of the Shirvanshahs, a gem of Azerbaijani architecture. Zoroastrian, Sasanian, Arabic, Persian, Ottoman and Russian chapters all left marks here, and UNESCO inscribed the walled city in 2000.