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The painted facade and latticed windows of the Palace of the Sheki Khans behind a stone wall and a tall plane tree

Sheki, Azerbaijan

Palace of the Sheki Khans

An 18th-century summer palace covered in painted murals and coloured-glass shebeke windows, in an old silk-road town in the Caucasus foothills.

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Culture & heritage

About Palace of the Sheki Khans

Sheki sits in the green foothills of the Greater Caucasus, and its Khan’s Palace is one of the most beautiful buildings in Azerbaijan. Built in the 18th century as a summer residence, it is small but extraordinary: the walls inside are painted with flowers, hunting scenes and battles, and the windows are filled with shebeke, wooden lattices set with thousands of pieces of coloured glass.

The historic centre of Sheki, including the palace, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Leave time for the old caravanserai, the workshops still making shebeke and silk scarves, and the town’s sweet speciality, Sheki halva.

Sheki is about five hours from Baku by road, so it works best as an overnight stop, often combined with Gabala.

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