ART & DESIGN ONE TO WATCH There can be little doubt that Baku is having a moment – and right now it’s a bright one Top: Flame Towers, the rightmost of which is home to the Fairmont; bottom: the twinkling façade of Crystal Hall. Opposite page, top: the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum inaugural European Games in 2015, an official offshoot of the Olympics that no other country has ever had the outsized budget – or popular will – to host. It is a city, in the words of British GQ editor Dylan Jones, that “feels it is so on the cusp of change that it might explode with excitement at any minute”. This sort of frenetic optimism and ambition is infectious, and as a matter of course has led Baku to have a buzzing nightlife scene, a pair of world-class hotels and a bevy of eateries that combine to make a trip to the Caspian not merely exhilarating but also very comfortable indeed. Like any respectable cosmopolis, the city’s architecture is as varied as the languages spoken on its streets. The UNESCO Heritage-protected Old City dates from the 12th century. The city’s late-19th-century blossoming, courtesy of Rothschild, Rockefeller and Nobel oil titans, bequeathed grand mansions and tree-lined boulevards to the new “Paris of the East”. The Soviets, in contrast, built primarily banal lifeless flats, which are now being given new façades, but they also erected a few grand edifices that still stand proud on the Bulvar, the arching waterfront promenade. The city’s recent additions, meanwhile, have been mostly postmodern: Hadid’s curvaceous cultural centre; a carpet museum in the shape of a rolled-up rug; Crystal Hall, the arena built for the 2012 Eurovision song contest; and the striking Flame Towers, a trio of 30-storey skyscrapers built on a promontory and fitted with LED lights that display animations visible across the city. The towers have an added significance as well: “Azer” means fire in Azeri, and the region has long been associated with the eternal flames that spurt from its energy-rich ground, including the one in the 17th-century Zoroastrian temple, Ateshgah of Baku, just outside the city. Another longstanding association the Caucusus boasts is with the arts, and Baku is no exception. Cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich was born here, and in addition to the centuryold State Philharmonic Hall, the National Art Museum holds an impressive collection of Western, Azeri and Russian artists, while the Jean Nouvel-designed Museum of Modern Art displays more than 700 works, mostly Azeri 20th century, with a handful of Picassos and Russian masterpieces. On the contemporary PHOTOS FROM TOP: ERIC CUVILLIER, MARCUS BREDT/ARTUR IMAGES 70 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
