Sheki Khan Palace and the Silk Road: Craft, Trade and Caravanserais in Azerbaijan

Long before Baku’s skyline filled with glass towers, the city’s real gateway to the world was a walled quarter of narrow lanes and merchant houses called Icheri Sheher. Our small group tour of the Caucasus opens here, in the old town, before tracing the historic road west to Sheki — once a wealthy staging post on the Silk Road, now home to one of Azerbaijan’s most extraordinary surviving palaces. Between the two lies a landscape of mud volcanoes, abandoned mausoleums and a border crossing into Georgia’s Kakheti wine country. It’s a short but rich stretch of the itinerary, and one built almost entirely around craft, trade and the people who kept both moving.

Baku’s Walled Beginning: Icheri Sheher as a Silk Road Hub

The tour’s opening days are spent in Baku, and the city’s old town, Icheri Sheher, is where the Silk Road story really begins. Its maze of cobblestone lanes, still lined with small mosques and turn-of-the-century merchant buildings, was the commercial and defensive heart of the city for centuries before oil remade Baku’s skyline. A guided walk through the quarter also takes in Shirvan Shah’s Palace, a 15th-century royal residence and, by most accounts, the finest surviving example of Shirvan architecture anywhere in the country. For readers wanting the fuller city context, our guides to Baku, Azerbaijan and the Palace of the Shirvanshahs cover that ground in depth — this article picks up the Silk Road thread where Baku leaves off, following it west.

It’s worth understanding this bookend before the palace-and-craft story that follows: Baku and Sheki are two ends of the same historic trade network, and this article treats them that way rather than as separate, disconnected stops.

The Road West: Shemakha, Mud Volcanoes and the Approach to Sheki

Leaving Baku, the drive to Sheki takes most of a day and passes through landscape and history that rarely make the highlight reel. The group stops first in Shemakha, which served for centuries as the capital and commercial centre of western Azerbaijan before Baku took over that role in the 19th century. Here stand the Yeddi Gumbaz, the “Seven Tombs” of the last ruling Shirvan Khans — only three of the original seven survive intact — and the Juma Mosque, whose 10th-century foundations are among the oldest in the Caucasus.

From Shemakha the road runs through stark, arid country dotted with mud volcanoes, a genuinely strange geological feature of this part of Azerbaijan, before a short stop at the Pir Diri Baba Mausoleum near Maraza — a tomb built directly into the face of a cliff. The group reaches Sheki in the late afternoon and overnights there, which matters for planning: the palace and workshop visits described below happen the following morning, before the group departs for the Georgian border, so Sheki itself is seen as a full evening and morning rather than a rushed afternoon stop.

How long does the tour spend in Sheki?

One overnight. The group arrives in Sheki in the late afternoon after the drive from Baku via Shemakha, and departs the following morning after visiting the Khan’s Palace, the Shebaka workshop and the local bazaar — all before continuing on to the Georgian border and Telavi. It’s a brief stop by the numbers, but the town’s historic centre is compact enough that the morning covers its key sites without feeling hurried.

Sheki’s Khan Palace: Mosaics and Shebaka Stained Glass

The Khan’s Palace stands within the remains of a fortress wall on the edge of town, and it’s easy to see why Sheki’s historic centre — palace included — was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The building is covered, inside and out, in detailed mosaic work, but its signature feature is the Shebaka windows: intricate panels of coloured glass set into hand-shaped wooden frames, fitted without a single pane of plain glass to interrupt the pattern. Sunlight through a Shebaka window scatters colour across the room in a way photographs rarely capture accurately, which is part of why the palace rewards being seen in person rather than skimmed from a guidebook.

Is the Khan’s Palace visit physically demanding?

No more than a typical morning of walking on this tour. The visit is a guided walk through the palace grounds and interior rather than a strenuous climb, though the surrounding old town has some uneven, cobbled ground underfoot. The tour’s overall activity level is Level 2 – Moderate, meaning travellers should be comfortable with three to five hours of walking a day, at times on uneven surfaces, and able to manage stairs and their own luggage — a fair general guide to what the Sheki morning, and the tour as a whole, involves.

The Shebaka Workshop: Watching a Silk Road Craft Survive

Beyond the palace itself, the group visits a working Shebaka workshop, where local artisans continue the craft that decorates the palace windows — cutting and fitting coloured glass into hand-shaped wooden frames using techniques passed down through generations of Sheki craftsmen. It’s a rare chance to see a Silk Road-era decorative art still practised as a living trade rather than preserved only behind museum glass, and it grounds the palace visit in something ongoing rather than purely historical.

What is Shebaka, and will we see it made?

Shebaka is the stained-glass and wood lattice technique used throughout the Khan’s Palace, and yes — the tour includes a visit to a working Shebaka workshop directly after the palace, where artisans demonstrate how the coloured glass and hand-cut wooden frames are assembled. Seeing the workshop after the palace makes the connection between the craft and the building immediate, rather than something explained secondhand.

The Bazaar and the Taste of Trade: Halva, Handicrafts and Caravanserai Life

Sheki’s wealth, historically, came from its position as a caravanserai — a stopping point where Silk Road traders rested, traded and resupplied on the long routes between Persia, the Caucasus and beyond. That trading identity is still visible in the town’s bazaar, where the group wanders among stalls selling local handicrafts and souvenirs alongside halva, a sweet confection flavoured with cinnamon, fennel or saffron that Sheki is particularly known for. It’s a good place to buy something small and specific rather than generic — a length of hand-worked textile, a box of local halva — with the added benefit of talking directly to the people making and selling it.

Is there time to shop at the Sheki bazaar?

Yes. The bazaar visit is built into the morning itinerary alongside the palace and workshop, giving travellers a genuine window to browse rather than a rushed five-minute stop. Cash in small denominations is useful for bazaar purchases, and halva makes a light, easily packed souvenir if you’re conscious of luggage space for the rest of the tour.

Crossing into Georgia: From Sheki to the Kakheti Wine Route

After the bazaar, the group departs Sheki and drives towards the Georgian border, crossing at Lagodekhi before continuing on to Telavi in the heart of Georgia’s Kakheti wine region. It’s a natural hinge point in the tour’s route logic — the Caucasus itinerary for mature travellers is deliberately built around exactly this kind of overland transition, letting the landscape and culture shift gradually rather than jumping between countries by air. In Telavi, the group learns about local bread baking and tries churchkhela, a traditional Georgian sweet made from walnuts dipped repeatedly in grape must, before dinner at the guesthouse.

It’s a fitting way to close this stretch of the journey: from a walled Silk Road hub in Baku, through mud volcanoes and a mausoleum carved into a cliff, into a palace still lit by hand-cut glass, and on to a border crossing that carries the same trading history into Georgia’s vineyards. The craft, the caravanserai and the crossing all belong to the same story — one this tour is built to follow at a considered pace, with the people who still keep parts of it alive.