Matthieu Paley

Azerbaijan has sat at a crossroads of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Western Asia for centuries as a Silk Road hub and a gateway that empires routinely fought to control. That intersection also has manifested itself in the nation’s food—a complex and enticing stew of Turkic, Persian, Eastern European and other regional influences. This food diary explores the unique cuisines of each region.

Some of the finest carpets ever made came from Ottoman workshops in western Anatolia between the 16th and 19th centuries. One of the best collections of them can be found displayed and stored among more than a dozen churches in Transylvania.

Photographer Matthieu Paley was in Southeast Asia working on stories about the evolution of the human diet when he made this picture. "I was visiting traditional, self-sufficient communities to see how food shapes daily life. My host was named Marita. She was inside preparing food as I arrived."

Paved with stones that, according to one Roman writer, “give the appearance not simply of being laid together ... but they seem to have actually grown together,” the Via Egnatia joined East and West under empires both Roman and Ottoman. Much of its 1,100-kilometer length can still be walked and driven, from original-stone footpaths in Albania to a superhighway in Greece.