Austrian company restores medieval bath in the Icheri Sheher

Baku / 15.05.19 / Turan: The Austrian company Atelier Erich Pummer GmbH is carrying out restoration work on the walls of the Gosha Gala, in Baku, and on the inside of the Icheri Sheher Historical and Archaeological Reserve. This company is restoring a 17th century bath complex.

The archaeological expedition of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan dug up the nameless bath in Icheri Sheher. The expedition leader Idris Aliyev told Turan about the excavations.

- We conducted research based on well-known historical data on the existence of a bath on the left side of "Gosh Gala Gapysy". We knew that the bath was in poor condition, but because the military commander's office was located above it, no outsider could enter here. Then the Soviet army left this place, and soon the commandant's office of the national army that had been stationed there. In 2007, the Icheri Sheher Reserve was created, which inherited from the military at this place a dirty garage with repair pits filled with debris.

The Institute of Archeology and Ethnography received an appeal from the leadership of the reserve "Icheri Sheher" with a request to investigate this area inside the Fortress, and the Absheron archaeological expedition led by me began work. In 2012, we began excavations here, gradually bringing to light a unique medieval bath complex. The central dome of the bath was dilapidated, some walls also, but the bath was kept in good condition. There were sewers and cesspools in the ground, the cleaning and excavation work continued for 2.5 years.

Our efforts have opened a bath complex, through which one can study the bath culture of Baku and Absheron. Here you can see how the water was supplied, heated and mixed, inside the bath there are bathing rooms, a toilet, and resting places. The crosses and fragments of shoulder straps of Russian soldiers, ingots, coins of the Shirvanshahs, the Baku Khanate, the Shamakhi Khanate, edged weapons, bullets and a cannon wheel are found in the Icheri Sheher Museum. We found stone products, the purpose of which we managed to find out here, in the excavations of the old bath. After the restoration is complete, you can create a museum of an ancient bath. Tourists will come inside to see how residents and guests of the city who came through the main gate after a difficult journey washed in Baku in the Middle Ages, said I.Aliyev.

When asked to evaluate the work of the Austrian company, Idris Aliyev said he was 99 percent satisfied with them.

Erich Pammer told Turan that in antiquity the Baku Maiden's Tower was white outside, covered with thick lime plaster. Small fragments of such plaster are preserved under the ground on the inner walls of the bath, which is currently being restored in Icheri Sheher.

Atelier Erich Pummer GmbH was founded in 1982 by Austrian Erich Pammer. The company carried out the restoration of the Maiden's Tower in Baku (2011-2013) and St. Stephen"s Church in Vienna, along with about 500 historic buildings in Europe and Azerbaijan. In Vienna, a workshop of Rossatz operates. -0-