Travel and Tourism in Azerbaijan

Nagorno-Karabakh and the Western Regions

The western regions of Azerbaijan, including the historically and politically fraught territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, are undergoing a profound transformation that makes travel there a complex and emotionally layered experience. This is territory where the recent past is physically present in destroyed buildings, overgrown towns, displaced populations, and ongoing reconstruction, and any traveler who comes here must engage honestly with that reality rather than treating it as mere backdrop.

Following the Second Karabakh War of 2020 and the subsequent 2023 military operation that ended the self-declared Armenian republic in the region, Azerbaijan reestablished control over Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts for the first time since the early 1990s. The ethnic Armenian population of the region, roughly 100,000 to 120,000 people, departed almost entirely to Armenia in September and October 2023. Azerbaijan has begun an ambitious reconstruction program in the recaptured territories, and the Azerbaijani government has declared several cities and areas priority zones for investment and development. The legal, humanitarian, and historical dimensions of these events are subject to completely different interpretations in Azerbaijani, Armenian, and international perspectives, and any honest account must acknowledge that complexity.

Shusha, known in Armenian as Shushi, is the city at the center of Karabakh's history and symbolism. Situated on a high plateau at an elevation of roughly fourteen hundred meters, surrounded by dramatic cliff edges and forested slopes, Shusha was founded in the eighteenth century as the seat of the Karabakh Khanate and was for over a century one of the most important cultural and intellectual centers in the South Caucasus. It was the birthplace of numerous celebrated Azerbaijani poets, musicians, and scholars, including the great mugham singers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Karabakh school of carpet weaving, one of the most prestigious regional traditions in Azerbaijan, originated here. For Armenians, the city held deep significance as a center of Armenian cultural and political life in Karabakh and as the site of significant violence during the conflicts of 1905-06 and 1918-20.

During the First Karabakh War, Armenian forces captured Shusha in 1992 in a battle that Azerbaijanis regard as one of the greatest disasters in their recent history. The city was under Armenian control until May 2020, when Azerbaijani forces recaptured it. Azerbaijan immediately declared Shusha the cultural capital of Azerbaijan, and a program of reconstruction began. The city was nominated for UNESCO World Heritage consideration, with Azerbaijan arguing for recognition of its Azerbaijani cultural heritage as a significant cultural landscape.

Visiting Shusha today means encountering a city that is simultaneously very old and almost brand new: ancient mosques and historic buildings being carefully restored alongside fresh construction of hotels, government buildings, and cultural institutions. The Azerbaijani government has invested heavily here as a demonstration of commitment to the western territories. The Govhar Agha Mosque, originally built in the nineteenth century, has been restored. The birthplace houses of prominent Azerbaijani cultural figures are being reconstructed as museums. The distinctive landscape of the high plateau, with its views across forested valleys and distant mountain ridges, remains exactly as described in historical accounts and poetry.

Agdam, by contrast, tells a completely different story. Located in the lowlands north of Nagorno-Karabakh proper, Agdam was a city of roughly thirty thousand people before 1993, when Armenian forces captured and systematically demolished it. The ruins remained largely untouched for nearly three decades under Armenian control, and photographs of Agdam taken during that period show an extraordinarily ghostly landscape: an entire city grid with streets, building foundations, and a few partially standing structures, all uninhabited and overgrown, a ghost town at a scale rarely seen outside of wartime Europe. Agdam has been compared to Pompeii in scale if not in cause. The reconstruction of Agdam has begun but the process will take many years, and the ruins themselves, before they are fully rebuilt, represent a stark monument to the cost of the Karabakh conflict for the civilian population.

The district of Fuzuli and the surrounding agricultural lowlands, once known for their cotton and grain production, were largely depopulated and the infrastructure destroyed during the First Karabakh War period. Fields that were cultivated before 1993 had returned to scrub. Irrigation systems had collapsed. Towns had been looted and demolished. The reconstruction effort involves new roads, housing, schools, hospitals, and agricultural infrastructure, and the Azerbaijani government has promoted the resettlement of internally displaced people whose families originated in these districts. The scale of physical reconstruction required is enormous.

Hadrut, another area in the western regions, was the scene of some of the most intense fighting during the 2020 war. Travel to the western regions currently requires organization through official channels, and independent travel to some areas remains restricted. The government has promoted a limited tourism program to Shusha and some other sites, and guided tours operate from Baku, but visitors should verify current access requirements before planning travel to these areas. The situation continues to evolve.

For travelers willing to engage with the complexity, a visit to the western regions provides a perspective on the human cost of territorial conflict that no history book can fully convey. Seeing the scale of what was lost, understanding the depth of the emotional and cultural significance these places hold for the people who were displaced from them, and witnessing the process of reconstruction is a profound experience that contextualizes contemporary Azerbaijan in ways that no amount of Baku tourism can accomplish.