Palace of Sheki Khans
Summer residence of 1797 famed for its shebeke stained-glass windows and painted interiors.
The palace was completed in 1797 as a summer residence for Muhammad Hasan Khan of Sheki and stands inside the walls of the Sheki fortress, among plane trees said to be several centuries old. It is a two-storey building of six rooms, four corridors and two mirrored balconies, built of river stone and brick and raised without nails or glue. Its best-known feature is the shebeke: lattices of wooden pieces holding thousands of small panes of Venetian coloured glass, assembled without adhesive.
Every interior surface is painted. Murals in tempera show hunting scenes, battles fought by the khan, flowers, birds and geometric bands, layered over earlier schemes that conservators have partly uncovered. The facade carries glazed tilework and a large stained-glass window above the entrance. The palace was restored in the twentieth century and again in recent decades, and in 2019 UNESCO inscribed the historic centre of Sheki together with the Khan's Palace on the World Heritage List. Guided visits take about half an hour.
Highlights
- Shebeke windows of Venetian glass set in wood without glue
- Tempera murals of hunts, battles, flowers and birds
- Built in 1797 without nails, inside the Sheki fortress walls
- Part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing of 2019
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