Sheki

Sheki sits on a slope in the southern foothills of the Greater Caucasus, in a valley of hazelnut and mulberry, and it was a silk town: raw silk, dyeing, weaving and the trade that came with them. The historic centre was inscribed in 2019 together with the Khan's Palace, an eighteenth-century summer residence whose two floors are covered in painted fresco and fitted with shebeke, wooden lattice windows holding thousands of pieces of coloured glass assembled without nails or glue. Two caravanserais survive, one of them working as a hotel.

What you actually see

• The Khan's Palace - a small two-floor summer residence, every surface frescoed, with shebeke windows.
• The shebeke - lattice frames of thousands of glass pieces held together without nails or glue.
• The caravanserais - the upper and lower Silk Road inns, one restored and operating as a hotel.
• The old quarter - stone houses with tiled roofs running up the slope, with the mountains behind.

When to go

May to October is the season, when the foothills are green and the passes are open. Autumn brings the hazelnut harvest and the best colour. Winter is cold and snowy but the palace is open and the town is empty.

Honest expectations

The palace is small and the visit takes twenty minutes; photography inside is restricted and enforced. Sheki is four to five hours from Baku on a road that is slow in places, so an overnight makes more sense than a day trip. The town is on a steep slope and walking it is hard work.

Nearby

Kish and its old church are five kilometres up the hill, Ilisu is northwest along the foothills beyond Qakh, and Lahij is southeast over the mountains.