The Ismailiyye Palace is the most striking of the buildings on Istiglaliyyat Street: a Venetian Gothic pile in dark grey stone, built between 1907 and 1913 by the oil magnate Musa Naghiyev as a memorial to his son Aga Ismayil, who died of tuberculosis at the age of nineteen. The architect was the Pole Józef Płoszko, who borrowed liberally from the Doge's Palace.
The building now houses the Presidium of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences and is not open to the public, but the exterior — sharp Gothic arches, pointed crenellations, marble inscriptions in Arabic — is one of the more theatrical pieces of architecture in the Caucasus.