A city rebuilt from ruins — Agdam was destroyed in the Karabakh conflict and is now returning to life after three decades as a ghost town
Agdam is a mid-sized Azerbaijani city in the Karabakh region that was almost entirely destroyed during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1991–1994) after its capture by Armenian forces in 1993, then systematically stripped and left as an abandoned ruin for nearly 30 years — earning it the grim comparison to Hiroshima among conflict photographers who documented its empty streets. Following the Second Karabakh War (2020), Azerbaijan retook the region, and Agdam has since been the subject of a significant government reconstruction effort. The city is in active transition — between ghost-town archa…
Agdam was founded in the 18th century as a khanate capital under the Karabakh Khanate. In Soviet times it developed as a regional agricultural and industrial center with a population of around 150,000. The city was captured by Armenian forces on 23 July 1993 during the First Karabakh War; its Azerbaijani population fled, and the city was looted and largely demolished over the following years. For nearly three decades, Agdam was one of the most complete examples of post-conflict urban destruction accessible in the former Soviet space. Azerbaijan's 2020 military campaign retook Agdam without si…