BAKU, AZERBAIJAN: ART AND ARCHITECTURE

On our first night in Baku, our guide took us to an observation point that looked out over the city. To get there, we had to climb about a million stairs (okay, may just a hundred thousand). We had gotten very little sleep the night before because of our 3:30 AM flight, and I was grumbling and grumpy.

However, as promised, the view from the top was a not-to-be-missed spectacular panorama of the capital and largest city in Azerbaijan. (Actually, there are no other large cities in Azerbaijan.) Most of the city actually lies below sea level, making it the lowest-lying national capital in the world:

The real reason people climb those bazillion steps at night, however, is to see the iconic Flame Towers, a trio of skyscrapers constructed between 2007 and 2012 that includes the tallest building in the country (about 600 feet - not so big by California standards). They have a wonderful, wavy shape, much like the flame on the tip of a candle:

Different colors are expressed on the walls of the buildings by way of more than 10,000 high-power LED luminaires:

The lights create a convincing impression of burning flames:

Alternately, it can look like the flag of Azerbaijan, waving in the breeze:

Azerbaijan's flag, from Wikipedia

Yeah, yeah, yeah--it was worth the climb, even in my zombie state.

The next day we saw lots of other interesting pieces of architecture, including the Caspian Waterfront Mall, built right on the edge of the Caspian Sea and not yet completed when we were there. The eight angled glass pieces were inspired by the eight-pointed star on Azerbaijan's flag (see above).

It looks a little like the Sydney Opera House, also built on the water's edge:

Picture from here

In the morning, we walked through town to find a place to eat breakfast. (No, we didn't settle for that McDonald's.) The scallop pattern in this courtyard ties in nicely to the Caspian Waterfront Mall roof line:

I really like this fountain of steel balls on a platform, along with the mascots from the 2017 Islamic Solidarity Games, which were held in Baku:

There is a lot of public art in Baku. It feels like a very European city:

Another piece of distinctive architecture is the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center, all flowing curves made from rectangles. It looks like the irregular folds that can be found in natural landscaping. Designed by the world-renowned Iraqi-British woman architect Zaha Hadid, this innovative hall has become internationally recognized and is a signature landmark of modern Baku. I don't know if those big plastic snails and bunnies are permanent or part of a temporary exhibit, but they are pretty cute (and just a little bizarre):

No, it's not art or architecture, but I so wanted to ride in one of these purple British-looking taxis:

I think this is a metro station. It sure beats the hole-in-the-ground style of many NYC metro stations:

Azerbaijan is known for its rug-making industry. It has its own style of patterns, including this one of Comrade Lenin:

One of my absolute favorite pieces of art in Baku is this ginormous head, a portrait of poet Aliaga Vahid, born in Baku in 1894:

Like an Escher drawing, there are images hidden in Vahid's hair and neck. According to our guidebook, Azerbaijan by Mark Elliott, "The overall point [of the carvings] is to show the balance between optimism and realism, humour and tragedy for which the poet (who died relatively unknown in 1965) has come to be valued:

This sculpture, entitled Seven Beauties, is a stack of traditional Azerbaijani tea glasses. The shapes of the glasses also reflect the contours of a female body, and as such symbolize the characters in an epic romantic poem entitled "Seven Beauties" written by another native son, Nizami Gencevi. Tea is a very important part of the local culture, and real-life versions of these ingeniously shaped glasses keep the tea from getting cold by minimizing the surface area on top:

On the left is a sculpture of a boy, a cat, and a girl looking out of a second story window, and the bas relief on the right looks like a cross between an ice cream cone and my book-laden nightstand:

This juice station looks better than any Jamba Juice in the states, and I was tempted by the shop that sells a wide variety of paintings:

Even our hotel, the Marriott Absheron, is a work of art:

The view from our room was wonderful:

And the view from the front--well, we were fighting the paparazzi, who were waiting for the arrival of a bus carrying somebody famous. We think it was the national soccer team.

The bus arrived, and apparently these are some of the famous people:

Sometimes it's nice to just sit back and watch, but not to care.