history huntingin Zagatala
Picturesque Zagatala is a great place to get to grips with the fascinating history of the North West of Azerbaijan. Top attractions include the remains of a vast fortress built here to house a Russian military garrison in the 1830s, which later became famous as the place where the mutineers of Battleship Potemkin – a key episode in the run-up to the Russian Revolution – were imprisoned in 1907. Today, what’s left are impressive fortified walls, along with the ruins of a water reservoir, stables, gunpowder warehouse, cannons and a former Russian church turned cultural club. An onsite guide will happily show you around them.
Meanwhile, just beneath the fortress walls on the central Dede Gorgud Square is the well-preserved structure of a disused Albanian church dating to the 5th-6th centuries, though the current building is an 1830s red-brick reconstruction used by the Russian soldiers in the fortress. It consists of three-storeyed halls complete with bell tower and columns. To learn more about Zagatala’s intriguing history, call into the local history museum on Heydar Aliyev Avenue.
