Baku Fortress Wall, Baku

Baku Fortress Wall is part of the Baku Fortress complex. It was built around 1139 on the orders of the nineteenth independent Shah of Shirvan Shirvanshah Manuchohr III.

A second set of fortress walls were built under Shirvanshah Akhistan I. These walls were destroyed while the country was under Russian control in 1888. Baku Fortress Wall is now the only one that remains.

In 1910, Colonel P.I. Martynov, then mayor of Baku, ordered that no more components of the fortress could be destroyed. The law stated that the fortress wall should be salvaged and repaired in order to preserve history and keep residents safe from any pieces that may fall from the complex.

The wall and the remainder of the Baku Fortress complex was named a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site in 2000. Other components of the Baku Fortress complex include the entirety of the Icheri Sheher, or Old City, and the towers that surround the fort.