Stretching nearly four kilometres along the western shore of the Caspian Sea, Baku Boulevard is the city's great public promenade — a wide, tree-lined esplanade that has served as the social spine of Baku since it was first laid out in 1909 under Russian imperial rule. What began as a narrow strip of reclaimed land has expanded dramatically over the decades, and a sweeping extension completed in the 2010s nearly doubled its length, pushing it south toward the crystalline towers of the Flame Buildings that now define the city's skyline. The relationship between boulevard and sea is central to understanding Baku: this is a city that grew fabulously wealthy from oil and used that wealth to reinvent its waterfront repeatedly, and the boulevard is the most legible record of that ambition.
Park