Ganja

Ganja is the country's second city and its western cultural anchor. It was the home of Nizami Ganjavi, the 12th-century poet whose domed mausoleum stands on the city's edge, and the centre still follows a calm plan of plane-tree avenues, the red-brick Shah Abbas mosque of 1606, the Javad Khan street and the improbable Bottle House. The main excursion is Goygol National Park, half an hour south, where a landslide triggered by a 12th-century earthquake dammed a valley beneath Mount Kapaz and created a deep blue-green lake ringed by pine forest. Ganja is the natural overnight stop on any route heading west toward Tovuz and the Georgian border.