Globalista

Baku is booming - it must be one of the few places on earth not plunged into gloom by the economic situation. Grandiose projects abound - the famous Boulevard along the Caspian Sea where oil barons once brushed shoulders with the nobles of Azerbaijan on their evening promenade, is being widened and extended and is, or will be, the site for lots of fanciful new schemes - a flying saucer-shaped concert hall specially for Mugham (sufi) music is up and running, as are musical fountains with coloured lights, gobbets of flame and jets that soar and plunge in time to piped orchestral music; the world's tallest flagpole will soon be finished across the bay, and a new carpet museum, to be shaped like a rolled-up carpet, is under construction, along with an elaborate business centre, a colossal supermarket and so on.

The beautiful honey-coloured stone town that the first oil barons - Rothschild, Nobel, etc - created at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries is being transformed (some say ruined) by this century's oil wealth into a city of high-rise buildings, glitzy restoration projects and modern archituecture (as above). It's bread and circuses - but, one has to admit, it's quite impressive and it's entertaining.