The Heydar Aliyev Center is Baku's most famous piece of contemporary architecture, a white wave of a building that rises and folds like a piece of paper caught mid-crease. From a distance the form is striking; up close, the seamless white surface and the way the building emerges from a slope of plaza paving is genuinely startling.
The interior houses three main galleries — a museum dedicated to former president Heydar Aliyev, a temporary exhibition space that has hosted some genuinely good shows, and a small auditorium. The museum content is unabashedly hagiographic but the building is the reason to come. Plan an hour for the architecture alone, more if there is an exhibition worth seeing.