Andrey VASILYEV

There are two Bakus: Baku by day, ultra-modern and realistic, and Baku by night, when a myriad of lamps and lanterns go on and the streets turn into a series of luminous and magic palaces as if they were carried over from a fairy tale.

Throughout its two thousand years of history, Baku by night has not been as beautiful as it is now. Streets and avenues brightly lit by thousands of powerful lamps and spotlights, the warm lighting of old buildings, the shining lights of new modern hotels and skyscrapers, colorful shop windows and millions of glowing windows. And the lights of the Flame Towers sound like powerful chords in this symphony of light.

Central Baku lives its own life, which is bustling in the daytime and cheerful and bright at night, when all seats at the tables in the countless cafes and restaurants are filled and smells of incomparable Azerbaijani cuisine float over the city. The Baku feast is a poem of taste, subtle nuances of spices, the keenness of fresh herbs and the sweetness of dozen types of jam, unhurried conversation and funny jokes, the joy of meeting old friends and getting acquainted with new ones.

One generation is replaced by another. Fashion, preferences, clothing, architecture, style, and even the content of life are changing. And sometimes it seems that only the spirit of Baku remains unchanged in this transience – a hospitable, cheerful and bustling city. Indeed, do a few decades matter for a city that has been standing here, on the shores of the white-haired Caspian, for more than two thousand years?! It is just a few moments in its long history.

Baku goes down to the sea, changing the style of quarters - residential, shopping and entertainment. And there is nothing that decorates it like the green belt of the boulevard, a favorite relaxation spot for all Baku residents and all generations of citizens. According to Baku standards, it is just a newborn baby – it is a little more than a hundred years old. Nonetheless, during this period it was rebuilt several times. Not so much because of changing tastes as because of the Caspian Sea, whose level rose so much in the 1980s that the magnificent fruit trees growing close to the sea died from salt poisoning. The radical reconstruction of the boulevard began in 2008. It was necessary to plan the lawns again, plant trees and arrange flower beds. But the boulevard turned out to be of extraordinary beauty and size. Soon it will be able to claim to be the longest boulevard in Europe.

Years pass, adding up to a century, and they are compressed into millennia. But the lights of the Maiden Tower still go on at night, showing sailors the way home through storms and bad weather, while the threatening towers of the Old Fortress are always on duty, guarding the peace of citizens.

With the arrival of the evening, some mysterious action takes place in the Old Town. The Old Town seems to return to the past. Signs of shops and hotels are still lit like modern lighthouses and restaurant windows are shining, while the rest of the attributes of the 21st century, which loudly makes itself felt with satellite dishes and the shiny chrome of cars during the daytime, appear to be washed away by darkness. And it seems that the sound of the steady steps of guards can be heard in the narrow streets of the fortress once again while wall stones whisper to each other, remembering the past.

The musical fountains of Baku. Releasing cool during the day and singing and dancing at night. This show is so great that every number they perform is awarded with a flurry of applause from the audience.

The city goes to sleep. A slight and damp breeze is blowing from the sea with a pungent smell of iodine. Fluffy southern stars shine in the gaps between the tree crowns. New snow-white buildings of Baku rise behind the back like an amphitheater with shining lights. Tourists that filled its streets with multilingual speech return to hotels. Rare passers-by hurry home. Lights go out in the windows. And as life subsides, the lights of new Baku, a beautiful snow-white city on the shores of the Caspian Sea, the capital of independent Azerbaijan, become brighter and brighter.

Photos by: Sergey Kivrin, Vugar Ibadov, Elbay Mustafabeyli, Araz Adilogly, Jeyhun Valiyev