Azernews.Az

BAKU – An international scientific conference and exhibition marking the 90th anniversary of Azerbaijan’s largest museum, the Azerbaijan State Museum of History, was held in Baku this week.

The event, titled "Museums and cultural heritage", was attended by up to 50 scholars and experts from Russia, Turkey, Iran, Georgia, Egypt, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and Ukraine.

Mahmud Karimov, President of the National Academy of Sciences, which oversees the history museum, said it is experiencing a new stage. Following an overhaul, new exhibits have been put on display.

The house museum of Azerbaijani oil magnate and philanthropist Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, whose former mansion hosts the facility, has been renovated and commissioned as well.

Karimov told the opening ceremony on Monday that participants of the two-day conference aimed to exchange experience and establish new contacts.

A custodian of Turkey’s Topkapi Palace Museum, Sibel Alpaslan, and a department head at Russia’s Daghestan State University, Prof. Artur Dalgatov, highly assessed the event organized in Azerbaijan to mark the history museum’s anniversary.

Mahammad Salam Abdulvahid, a well-known Egyptian journalist, delivered a speech that was met with applause. He said that historical monuments are a gift of the past, and regardless of the country hosting them, protecting these sites is everyone’s noble duty.

"It is very unfortunate that they don’t realize this sacred duty in Armenia and are destroying Islamic monuments in Azerbaijan’s occupied territories."

Abdulvahid condemned these crimes, calling on UNESCO and the United Nations to prevent them and crack down on Armenia.

He further noted that numerous museum exhibits and ancient manuscripts have been stolen from both Egypt and other Oriental countries in past centuries and taken to museums in Western countries and private collections. He said Egypt is working to regain those masterpieces and negotiating the issue with relevant institutions abroad. The country has already reclaimed numerous exhibits from the United States and France. Talks on the matter are also underway with Germany, Britain and other Western nations, Abdulvahid added.

The conference attendees reviewed the museum’s exhibits as well as made trips to Azerbaijan’s historic sites including Icherisheher (Old City), Atashgah temple (fire worshipping site) and Mardakan Tower.

The Azerbaijan State Museum of History, located in Baku, was founded in 1920. The building of the Museum was built in 1895-1902. The Italian Renaissance-style mansion has four floors in some parts of the 101-room building. It was designed by Polish architect Jozef Goslawski.

When the Red Army entered Baku in 1920, Taghiyev's residence - like that of other wealthy oil barons - was immediately confiscated. Under a decision of the USSR government, the residence was established as a museum in June 1920, only a few months after the Bolsheviks took Baku.

President Ilham Aliyev, who visited the museum in 2005, ordered to carry out an overhaul and comprehensively repair and restore the building. The daunting task was successfully fulfilled with the aid of foreign renovators, and the museum, with its spectacular interior, opened its doors to visitors in December 2007.

On the second floor of Taghiyev's residence, side by side there are two major ballrooms. One is based on Oriental designs (Mauritanian) style and the other, on Occidental design. The Oriental Room has enormous plate glass windows, gilded arches, highly ornamental walls, ceilings and chandeliers. The lines in the Occidental Room are more perpendicular to each other - rectangular.

According to photographs that are about 90 years old, one of the most elaborate rooms was Taghiyev's wife's boudoir (private sitting room). All of the movable furniture and paintings in this room have disappeared. Nothing remains today except the ornate mirrored mosaic ceiling. During the Soviet period, four layers of white paint were applied over the highly decorative floral designs on the walls. Still in the main halls of the residence, the original paint has withstood the passage of time incredibly well. The paint was made of finely ground egg shell as was the practice of artists of Byzantine icons. Nearly 100 years later, the original colors with their subtlety and sophistication have neither faded nor chipped.

The museum has more than 2,000 exhibits.

This article is published under a project of the Foundation for State Assistance to the