Azernews.Az

By Nigar Orujova

The must-see list of Baku’s museum definitely includes the Miniature Books Museum, a private museum that was recently added into the Guinness Book of World Records.

This tiny museum in the Old City is the first private museum of the miniature book that was marked by Guinness World Records as the largest collection of miniature books.

It location in the Inner City adds charms to this place, where hill people should live.

The museum opened its doors in 2002; however, formation of the collection has been going on for over 30 years.

The 38 exhibition cases show more than 5,600 miniature books from 66 countries.

The museum’s rarest books are four microbooks published at Toppan in Japan, one of them is 0,75x0,75 mm and three others are of 2x2 mm format, as well as four German miniature books, one of which is 2,0x2,9 mm, and three in the format of 3.5x3.5 mm. Have you even imagined that storybooks could be that little?

There are also over 2,900 books in the 75x75 mm format in the museum.

The books of the museum are not only little creatures but also real texts on the tiny pages. There are books on Azerbaijani classics of literature, science and art, religious books, Russian, Soviet and foreign classics.

Little visitors of the museum (I mean children, not elves) are trilled and excited with the exhibits.

Here you can find out when and how first miniature books appeared and learn their history and fate.

The oldest volume in the museum is a copy of the Koran dating back to the 17th century. Other early miniatures include "The History of England" created in 19th century in London. There is also a set of five volumes in French entitled "The Adventure of Young Lavilas in Greece", published in 1817.

Most of miniature books are not cheap. They cost a real fortune. You may think that they did not worth so much but after seeing these art pieces, which were created by using antique and modern technologies, you will change your mind. For this, you must visit the Miniature Books Museum at 1/67 Icheri Sheher street.

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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews’s staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar

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