Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center - A vision of serenity

When booking a city tour of Baku, the concierge team at Fairmont Baku, Flame Towers, strongly urges first time visitors to the capital to put aside a view extra minutes to experience one of the most unique buildings in the world - the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center, designed by architect Zaha Hadid.

Sited within a large expanse of space, required to appreciate its beauty fully, no two views of the building are the same and visitors tend to walk around the entire complex, inevitably drawing something new from its every angle.

A series of overlapping fluid surfaces, with all evidence of the frame of the building concealed, the Center seems to defy gravity with its very shape. Sweeping curves twist around the visitor with no one side like the other. Coloured white for purity with an everlasting line to depict eternity, this has to be one of the most difficult buildings to have been constructed in recent years - as well as one of the most intriguing.

It might come as no surprise therefore to hear that it was built to showcase Baku's cultural programme.