The Press Mosaic in Baku, Azerbaijan

Most Popular PlacesRandom PlaceListsItinerariesAdd a PlaceDownload the App The Press Mosaic Replica of the Portal of the Casa de la Cadena House of the Gladiators The Créac'h Lighthouse Cryptid Tourism: The Best Museums, Destinations & Festivals Across America 10 days ago The façade of Soviet Azerbaijan's state printing house is shaped like an open book, inlaid with writing systems from Egyptian hieroglyphs to a Mayan calendar. The full sweep of the wall, with the star panel at its centre. Ulvi Gitaliyev / Atlas Obscura User Egyptian hieroglyphs, Arabic script and a Mayan calendar, set into the raised pages.

Ulvi Gitaliyev / Atlas Obscura User The slogan in Russian and Azerbaijani, picked out in yellow tile. Ulvi Gitaliyev / Atlas Obscura User Figures holding printed sheets, on the wall beside the main entrance. Ulvi Gitaliyev / Atlas Obscura User A robed figure with a laurel branch, beneath the star.

Ulvi Gitaliyev / Atlas Obscura User The full sweep of the wall, with the star panel at its centre. Ulvi Gitaliyev / Atlas Obscura User The building that printed Soviet Azerbaijan's newspapers and books is shaped like an open book. It takes a moment to register from the pavement, and then it becomes difficult to see anything else: two great pages picked out in cut stone, spread wide across the front of the printing house.

Worked into them is a history of writing. Egyptian hieroglyphs sit at one end and a Mayan calendar at the other, with Chinese, Georgian, Armenian and Arabic script filling the space between. Above the figures run the mastheads of the Soviet press, among them Iskra, the first socialist newspaper in Russia, and Pravda.

And across the wall, in Azerbaijani and Russian, sits the most reproduced political slogan of the twentieth century: workers of the world, unite! It is mounted on the building that spent decades reproducing it. The street outside is called Mətbuat prospekti, Press Avenue, named after the printing house.

Nobody involved was aiming for subtlety. The building still works, and it looks it. Its own online reviews divide neatly between visitors calling the mosaic outstanding and tenants complaining that nothing has been renovated in decades and the lift is ancient.