A historic city with a youthful spirit

In central Ganja, you’ll find ancient mosques and hammams built during the reign of the Safavids that sit side by side with structures from the Ganja Khanate and Russian Empire as well as eye-catching examples of socialist classicism. The city is truly brimming with history, yet it also exudes a distinctive youthful energy, reflected in its selection as the 2016 European Youth Capital. In and around the city centre you can admire atmospheric 19th-century red-brick buildings and discover traces of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic – the first democratic republic in the eastern world whose first capital was Ganja.