The Philharmonic Park is the oldest garden in Baku. It is located near the eastern Small Fortress wall of the old city of Icheri Sheher, between the Eastern Fortress Gate and Azneft Square.
Originating in the early 1830s on the basis of private plantations and on the site of private gardens and vegetable gardens, the garden between the two fortress walls soon turned into a boulevard with a single green alley. For a long time it was the only garden in the city and was called the Governor's or Mikhailovsky (in honor of the brother of Nicholas II Michael).
The development of the garden is closely connected with the activities of the Baku commandant R. R. Hoven (Fauven), under whose leadership not only the range of vegetation was expanded and enriched, but the soil was also improved. It was formed artificially from imported land and humus. For this purpose, the commandant ordered merchants who come by sea from Iran to deliver several cubic meters of fertile land as a special duty. This "caprice" of the bosses benefited the city: the population received a garden developing in favorable conditions. On its territory grew mulberry, olives, poplar, fig tree, acacia, rakita, as well as vines. Along with them, castor oil, sesame, flowers and vegetables were cultivated. Baku commandant Hoven used all the opportunities for landscaping, planting trees not only of local species, but also of imported ones.
In 1853, the district chief raised the question of arranging the city garden, which mainly consisted of fruit trees and various shrub species, giving it a look that did not meet its intended purpose - a resting place for the general public. After 1859, when the outer fortress wall was removed, the territory of this garden was expanded. By 1865, he received new features due to the planting of ornamental plants, the construction of a dance floor and other park structures that gave him a social character. First of all, they planted mulberry, elm, pine, acacia. Broken flower beds. In addition to local types of trees, trees were brought from other regions. At that time there were about 12 thousand trees in the garden and they took root, as in the most favorable climate.
The artistic side of the city garden was given great importance. Its planning characteristics varied depending on the allocation. The main features of the layout took shape when its territory stabilized, limited by the fortress wall on one side and Nikolaevskaya and Sadovaya streets on the other.
In 1876, pools and retaining walls were built in the garden in areas with a pronounced relief. Soon, the lower part of the garden received a free layout, perfectly linked to the relief.
Since the autumn of 1894, capital work began in the garden: tracing paths, replanting trees, expanding the greenhouse, and others. Alleys appeared with deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs, and between them - lawns and other elements of landscape gardening art. They planted decorative trees and shrubs, pitched dance floors, built a pool, gazebos, terraces. The garden was beautiful before our eyes.
Entrance to the garden for ordinary citizens was limited to one day of the week. But for the high-ranking nobility, oil millionaires, the gates have always been hospitably opened.
According to contemporaries, by the end of the 19th century the garden was a beautiful oasis in the city and had a rich assortment of tree species and flowers brought from different parts of the world: it was breadfruit, date palms, pistachios. An unpretentious shrub - livestock, stable in a hot climate, covered the entire free space of the garden. A huge amount of yellowflower in the occupied area was not inferior to vitality and amounted to a true decoration of the garden. The beautiful building of the city club, which grew up in a wasteland (1882), was surrounded by dense greens of olive trees, American ash and Persian lilacs. Among the picturesque shady garden, fountains beat and arbors of peculiar architecture rose.
Mikhailovsky Garden was constantly updated: the main city gardener annually expanded the "palette" of green and floral backgrounds, made adjustments to the layout, achieving beautiful landscape compositions. This garden stood out among other gardens; he was given more money and attention than everyone else. The lush greenery of the garden and its beauty were the pride of the city council.
In 1899, new work was launched in the Mikhailovsky Garden regarding the improvement of the layout and construction of new garden structures. Pools were built near the retaining wall: on the border of the lower and upper parts of the garden a grotto was arranged, entwined with vines and shrubs. The city garden is the only place where the Baku public found refuge in the summer from the stuffiness and heat in the summer.
The well-known botanist V.E. Eichler was in charge of the Mikhailovsky Park and it would be hardly better for anyone to manage the device of the park. He personally worked in the garden, monitored every flower and therefore in this, in 1889, there were many plants that had never been grown in it before. He discovered new types of plants, two of them were described in the German botanical journal, and scientists called them Tulipa Eichleri u Bulbucodium Eichleri. Tulip is a single flower, cup-shaped, with a diameter of up to 5 cm and a height of 40 cm, has a bright red color with a dazzling black bottom, and the back is ivory. In 1993, a stamp with the image of this amazing flower was released in Azerbaijan. And another Eichler tulip - pink. In addition, he found a breadfruit in the garden, which grows only in the tropical zone. His work was almost not rewarded, for a salary of 600 rubles at that time was negligible.
The gardener also intended to create "islands, and rivers, and algae, and some special mulberry tree, which is intended to shade the entire area, for this you have to change the layout of the garden and cut down up to 30 large trees," the Caspian newspaper ironically said.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Mikhailovsky Garden grew so much that its lower and upper parts merged, and the audience eagerly filled all its alleys. The plan of 1904 recorded the finally formed green organism of the landscape type. In his planning there is no random direction of development, it was always determined by the nature of the relief. There was a main avenue connecting the lower and upper parts and the embankment with the main entrance from Nikolaevskaya Street. The alley kept changing direction, revealing various landscapes with a deep aerial perspective. The rest of the alleys and paths, with apparent independence, gravitated to the main one, preserved throughout the entire formation of the garden. Shady alleys with a green canopy almost closed above them interspersed with spacious open areas on the main terraces.
Various landscape gardening structures were included in the landscape architecture of the garden: fountains, arbors, pavilions, etc., which to one degree or another contributed to the identification of spectacular sections or panoramas.
In May 1891, the City Council considered the application of Philip Karlovich Lenz on the establishment of a dairy farm, and already in June its second dairy department was opened in the lower rotunda of the Mikhailovsky Garden, where besides all dairy products, coffee, tea, chocolate and cookies were offered. The first "Lentsovskaya Dairy" worked at the Fair Square (from 1923 - the October Revolution, Ilyich Square) and was in great demand. Kefir was made exclusively on the milk of his farm, which was released from the pharmacy of K. Becker.
In 1907, after a fire in the Mikhailovsky (or, as it is still called, the Governor's) garden, which destroyed the building of the summer club of the Public Assembly, it became necessary to build a new large building that would meet its purpose (holding meetings, concerts, balls). A 3640-square-meter site for the club was allocated, and construction began on a new Public Assembly building with a concert hall, summer stage and restaurant.
In 1908, the elders of the club of the Public Assembly obtained from the Duma the alienation of the corner of the garden under the summer club. The question of its construction in the garden caused a storm, since many members of the construction commission were fundamentally against the loss of greenery. The mayor of N.V. Raevsky was in solidarity with them, who believed that 220 large trees could not be sacrificed for the sake of building a club.
According to the assumptions, the architect of the building was sent to the city of Monte Carlo so that he would draw up exactly the same design for Baku as the Philharmonic in Monte Carlo, which occupies one of the first places in terms of beauty in Europe. There is also a version that the director of the Caucasian Partnership oil company asked the architect to build a summer scene in front of his property so that he could see the musicians sitting on the balcony.
The artistic decision of the club building in the style of the Italian Renaissance, as well as all the buildings built in Baku at that time, did not escape some stylization in the mixture of eastern and western styles. The culmination of the composition was a spectacular dome and two turrets. Contemporaries found in the silhouette of this building a community with the image of a mosque with two minarets. The versatility of the volumetric solution, expressed in the terrace composition of the building, towering above the greenery of the garden, gives the impression of an unreal, almost fabulous castle.
In 1912, according to the project of the St. Petersburg civil engineer G.M. Termikelov, the building of the Public Assembly was built. The opposite side of Nikolaevskaya Street was built up at that time mainly by tenement houses. Due to the high cost of rented apartments on this street, only very wealthy citizens could afford to live in these houses. Representatives of the city nobility and intelligentsia settled here. Almost all of these houses are made in classical forms of Western European architecture.
During the Soviet Union, the name of the park was first changed to "Garden of the Revolution", then - to "Pioneer Garden". In 1990, a bust of the poet Aliaga Wahid was placed in the garden and the park was called the "Garden of Wahid." In 2009, the bust was transferred to Icheri Sheher, and after the last repair, the garden began to be called the “Philharmonic Park”. During the reconstruction, rare types of trees were planted - oak, cedar and ash, a new irrigation system, a platform with a variety of ornamental plants, beautiful landscape compositions.
During reconstruction and reconstruction work in the park, an underground passage dating back to the 19th century was discovered. Entrance to the tunnel was discovered by workers during the reconstruction of the fountain near the Philharmonic. The underground passage begins with a camera, the descent into which can be roughly dated 70-80 years of the 19th century, and then continues with a tunnel having a height of about a human height and a width of more than half a meter. A preliminary survey of 150-200 meters of the underground passage shows that it first goes towards the road and further towards the sea, and in the 19th century sewer outlets were brought up to it, probably for the purpose of appropriate use.
There is every reason to believe that the tunnel was laid back in the Middle Ages and was originally intended to supply Baku with water, and later for several reasons it was restored in order to adapt it to other tasks.
As a result of archaeological research on the territory of the Governor's Garden, a fragment of the foundation of the southwestern part of the middle fortress wall built in the 12th century (1138-1139) was revealed. In addition, archaeological excavations in the Governor's Garden revealed a fragment of the old water supply, or sewer system of the old city from clay (pottery) pipes laid near the main fortress wall.
Interestingly, the identified line is not parallel to the surface of the earth, as is usually the case when laying pipes, but is directed inward, i.e. normal to the surface. Clay pipes are threaded into each other, and the joints are sealed with a fastening solution. Here, at a depth of 1.2 meters, a stone 50x40 centimeters in size was found, in the middle of which a hole with a diameter of 15 centimeters was drilled. An interesting fact is that the clay pipe line passes through this hole and goes steeply down. The following can be assumed about the purpose of ceramic pipes: either it was a water supply line heading to an underground well (they date back to the 14th century), or it was a sewer line heading to an old moat.
In the garden, near the southern gate of Icheri Sheher, only the entrance portal of one building, built in the 18th century, has been preserved. It is perpendicular to the main fortress wall. Of the five stone inscriptions milled on its surface, it turns out that the palace was built in 1384 and was a charitable organization of a certain Seyid Sadullah, and later became a caravanserai. At the beginning of the 19th century, after the capture of Baku by Russian troops, a barracks was established here.
Near the southwestern fortified walls, 8-10 meters north of the above entrance portal, an interesting building was found at a depth of 1 meter. Initially, they discovered a depression inaccurately laid out from smooth stones in the shape of a square, measuring 1.5x1.5 meters. At a depth of one and a half meters, it turned out that the square pit belongs to a later time, and it was built on an underground monumental building - an ovdana 8 meters high and 12.5 meters wide. The underground building with a domed roof can be dated to the 14th century.
Currently, there are rose bushes in the garden, mainly brought from Turkey and Italy, which were planted near tree trunks and then attached to them. Lashes of roses encircle trees, rising to 7-8 meters high, which makes them remind lovers from afar. Such roses can be found only in the Philharmonic Garden. Chrysanthemums planted next to the trees bloom in October and do not fade for 2-3 months. Lilies, gardenias and palm trees blooming in the Philharmonic Garden require special care in the winter months - they are covered or wrapped to protect them from the cold. Ailant and a mulberry tree, growing here since ancient times, are one of the most unpretentious plants of the garden. On the outskirts of the garden, close to the road, camellias were planted about a year ago. They bloom in March and April. Khan plane tree is one of the oldest trees in the garden. In addition, there are such plants as fir, holly, elm, stone oak, cedar, magnolia, yucca, oleander, cypress, willow and others.
The heroes of the film "The Day Passed" played snowballs in this garden, the heroine of Kurban Said's novel "Ali and Nino" made an appointment here for Ali. In the novel, Ali also mentions the then Governor's, and now the Philharmonic Garden, as: "a garden laid by great efforts on sandy ground."
The park is also interesting because African parrots live there. It is assumed that these birds were let loose in Baku by importers who brought in a batch of parrots for sale in pet stores, but faced with a customs ban, they released the birds into the wild. First, the parrots populated Baku Boulevard, then flew to the Philharmonic Park and took root there. It remains a mystery how they survive the snowy winters, where they feed. The rest of the time, parrots eat the fruits of palm trees, ornamental plants, cones.