Caravanserai House

Caravanserai House occupies a nineteenth-century merchant’s home built from the same honey-coloured limestone as the fortress wall it backs onto. The family who run it have kept the vaulted ceilings and the original shutters, and added the things the building never had: proper insulation, fast Wi-Fi and a shower that works.

Two bedrooms open onto a small internal courtyard where breakfast is served until eleven — tandir bread, local tomatoes, white cheese, cherry preserve and as much tea as you can drink. The roof terrace looks straight across the flat roofs of the Old City to the Flame Towers, which is worth setting an alarm for at sunset.

Everything inside the walls is walkable. The Palace of the Shirvanshahs is four minutes uphill, Fountain Square six minutes the other way, and the seafront boulevard is a straight five-minute walk downhill.