Baku Fire Temple

The Baku Fire Temple, known in Azerbaijani as Atəşgah, stands in the municipality of Surakhani, on the eastern tip of the Absheron Peninsula, about thirty kilometres from central Baku. From the road the compound looks small and almost anonymous: limestone walls on a square plan, a central tower and a row of cells facing the inner courtyard. What sets it apart from any other temple in the region is not its architecture but what lies beneath: the subsoil of this strip of Absheron leaked natural gas spontaneously, and that gas burned on its own, without human intervention, producing flames that Zoroastrian and Hindu pilgrims interpreted for centuries as a divine sign.

Today that natural gas ran out decades ago and the flames on the central altar and the side niches arrive through a pipe connected to the municipal network. It is a detail the site does not hide, and worth knowing before you arrive so you do not expect something that no longer exists. What does remain is the atmosphere of the courtyard: the persistent smell of sulphur in the air, the muffled sound of the altar flame, the stone worn smooth by centuries of hands and knees. The pilgrims' cells are fitted out as a small museum with mannequins, cooking utensils and devotional objects from the 17th to the 19th centuries.

A full visit to Ateshgah takes between 40 and 50 minutes. The compound is rarely crowded, except when several organised groups arrive at mid-morning. If you come before ten or after three in the afternoon, the courtyard is usually almost empty and the silence makes the place more rewarding.

The soil of the Absheron Peninsula has leaked natural gas for millennia, and the seeps that burned spontaneously were venerated by Zoroastrian communities from Antiquity, who saw in the eternal fire a manifestation of the god Ahura Mazda. The temple visited today was built in the 17th century mainly by Hindu merchants and ascetics who came from the Indian subcontinent, which explains the inscriptions in Sanskrit and Punjabi carved into the walls of the compound. Ateshgah functioned as an active place of worship well into the 19th century, when the gas seeps gradually dried up. The industrial oil exploitation of Absheron from the second half of the 19th century accelerated that process. In the Soviet era the temple was restored and declared a historical and architectural reserve, and since 2007 it has been on Azerbaijan's tentative list for nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

• Central altar with flame The stone altar in the centre of the courtyard is the heart of the temple. The flame burning on it now arrives through a municipal gas pipe, but the stone structure and the heat it radiates remain the focal point of the visit.
• Flame tower The tallest structure in the compound, at whose base the main flames emerge. Its silhouette appears in almost every photograph of Ateshgah and is the most recognisable architectural element of the ensemble.
• Pilgrims' cells The rooms surrounding the inner courtyard are fitted out as a site museum, with reconstructions of the daily life of Hindu ascetics and devotional objects from the 17th to the 19th centuries.
• Sanskrit and Punjabi inscriptions Carved directly into the stone of the walls, these inscriptions document names, dates and prayers of the devotees who lived and died in the temple, and are the most direct testimony to its Indian origins.
• Industrial landscape of Absheron From outside the compound you can see oil installations and extraction towers that contextualise the landscape surrounding the temple: the same land that burned with natural gas was later drilled for oil.

Photo gallery

Ateshgah is in Surakhani, about 30 km from central Baku. The easiest option is to take the metro to Koroğlu station and from there a taxi or Bolt to the temple, a journey of about 20–25 minutes costing around 5–7 manats. The compound is usually open from 09:00 to 18:00 and admission costs around 2–3 manats. It can easily be combined with a visit to Yanardag (the Fire Mountain), which lies in the same direction north of Baku.

Ateshgah can be visited year-round. Spring (April–May) and autumn (September–October) offer the most comfortable conditions, with temperatures between 15 and 25 degrees. Summer in Absheron is dry and very hot, with highs above 35 degrees and a constant wind that stirs up dust. Winter is cold and windy, though it rarely drops below zero; visiting is possible, but days with the northerly Khazri wind make the inner courtyard quite unpleasant.