We are in Baku, the city of contrasts. The city today is a huge construction site where they build skyscrapers and  interchanges, as well as reconstruct old Soviet five-storeyed buildings. Baku has combined nice architecture and good food.

In some areas, Baku may resemble you Dubai, while it is mostly a typical Soviet-style city.

Some say they plan to demolish all old low-rise buildings located in downtown Baku to replace them with modern constructions.

Reconstructed Soviet residential houses look amazing!

They face them with stone, attach nice balconies and illumination.

The city has a heavy traffic so there are often traffic jams on the road, so they have installed information screens showing the road situatiion.

Some projects they are building in Baku are really impressing, like the 12,000 m2 Haydar Aliyev Cultural Centre which is planned to feature a concert hall and a library.

This is what the concert hall interior will be look like soon.

Construcion works are almost over.

It is a large construction site!

They will charge you about 2 Euros for entering the old city.

They wanted to make the old city a place of interest for tourists but in fact it has nothing but souvenir stores and cafes.

Here you can buy a nice rug.

This is a Baku-style tuning. They wash their cars right on the street carrying water in buckets.

Security officers do not let photographers take pictures of construction works because they are afraid the photographs may be sent to different inspection bodies.

A ‘jam’ by a mosque.

These are houses situated in the outskirts of Baku.

An abandoned house.

People in Baku may rebuild their apartments the way they want and they do not need to receive a permission from their neighbors.

Residents of this house were unanimous in their desire to attach a huge building to their apartment house.

However, the buildings in downtown Baku are in order.

Some new constructions stand out against the rest of the buildings. May be, they should prohibit using colorful glass in order to prevent developers from disfiguring the city.

In this photograph, you can see a TV tower and three high-rise buildings called Fire Towers. They are going to include offices, apartments and a hotel. They initially planned to finish the construction by December, 2010 but due to bad weather conditions they had to put off the deadline.

This parachute tower is currently under reconstruction.

A cafe.