Gobustan State Historical-Artistic Reserve

At the Gobustan National Historical and Artistic Reserve, Azerbaijan’s ancient past comes vividly to life - from prehistoric rock art to the famed “singing stones” - through an extraordinary collection of petroglyphs. Depicting figures of people and warriors, animals, boats, dances, hunting scenes and camel caravans, these carvings offer insight into ways of life dating back between 5,000 and 20,000 years.

The Gobustan Reserve is home to an extraordinary collection of more than 7,000 rock engravings. The site also contains ancient settlements, caves and burial mounds, all of which bear witness to human activity in the area from the Upper Palaeolithic period through to the Middle Ages. Covering a total area of 4,535 hectares, tours of the reserve begin at the modern Gobustan Museum.

Two further highlights of the reserve are a Latin inscription carved into the rock by Roman soldiers who passed through the area in the first century AD, and the so-called “Gaval Dash” — a two-metre-long musical stone that produces a distinctive tambourine-like sound when struck with a small stone.

The site was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2007.