Along Neftchiler Avenue, where Baku's oil-boom architecture faces the Caspian shore, a creamy limestone palazzo rises nine floors beneath oxidised copper domes — a building conceived not as a conversion but as an entirely new structure designed to carry the weight of a grander era. The Four Seasons Hotel Baku opened in 2012, its facade marshalling arched arcades, wrought-iron balustrades, and mansard rooflines into a Beaux-Arts composition that holds its own against the city's genuine belle époque survivors nearby. With 171 rooms and suites, the building was purpose-built for the Four Seasons brief, and its proportions — generous floor plates, double-height public rooms — show it. Inside, the interiors navigate the tension between European classicism and something more locally inflected. Guest rooms carry tufted linen headboards framed by ebonised timber, pale silk carpets with geometric patterning, and arched French doors opening onto the ironwork balconies visible from the street — the architecture pressing through into the domestic scale rather than disappearing behind a generic hotel fit-out. The spa takes a different register entirely: a double-height pool hall where white plasterwork pilasters frame large gilded botanical murals, the water lined in fine turquoise mosaic, the effect closer to a Viennese Jugendstil bathhouse than anything from the Caspian. The cocktail bar, by contrast, goes fully contemporary — a curved brass counter glowing beneath a domed ceiling installation depicting an illuminated underwater scene, the whole room finished in dark oak and brass mesh screens.

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