Aghdam Bread Museum
Aghdam Bread Museum was a museum in Aghdam, Azerbaijan. It was the second bread museum in the world and the first of USSR. It was destroyed in 1992 during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. History. Idea of establishment of bread museum belongs to first Secretary of the district party committee, Sadykh Murtuzayev. The repair and restoration works of the mill that started in 1982 were completed in 1983. The museum was first visited on November 25, 1983. The Armenian Armed Forces shelled the museum twice. Although the first projectile that hit the third exhibition hall did not explode . The second missile hit on August 12, 1992 at 16:40. Zahid Valiyev, the chief investigator on the Karabakh Inter-district Prosecutor's Office, said in the materials of the criminal case No. 64525 that on August 12, 1992, a missile was fired from Khanabad and Nakhchivanik villages of the former Askeran region of Aghdam, and one of the missiles fell onto the Bread Museum. As a result of the inability to extinguish the resulting fire, about 1500 exhibits in the museum were burned down. Design. The museum was established on the site of a mill, which was built by Mohammad  Garayev, from the region at the end of the 19th century. It was protected by the state as a monument to local culture. The museum design was carried out by a team led by Eduard Krupkin, an employee of the Artistic Design Department of the Ministry of Culture. The delegation was headed by Sariya Ismayilova, chief of the museum department. The museum consisted of three main sections. The entrance was opened directly to the summer hall. There was a small fountain in the middle of the partly covered hall. It was also possible to move to the "Sunbul" café, both  to the kitchen and to two small dining rooms. The Exhibition hall was located by entering the hall and turning left. There was also the second entrance of the museum, which led to the administration office. As the exhibition hall was tall, some of it was divided into the upper floors. There was a 20 square meter administrative room with a foyer on the left side of the entrance door. There was an entrance to the museum's backyard from the top of that place. At the museum, additional exhibits of the museum were kept. The ceramic boards inside the  museum were made to fit the atmosphere of the mill. 80 thousand rubles were spent for the design works inside the museum. Exhibits. The first exhibition hall area was , the second was . In the first hall there was a mechanical mill with a capacity of grinding 8-10 tons of wheat per day. Here is also the "Trier" grain cleaner, which was used in the 30s of the last century. In the second exhibition hall there were demonstrations of instruments - wings, legs, china, wagons, handmade mill (kirkira) from II century, and a grain grinder called "charchar". The wooden staircase on  the right side of the mall was used to climb to the second floor. Products made from flour, including baked breads in Ganja, Nakhchivan, Garabagh, Georgia, Armenia, Dagestan and Samarkand were exhibited here. In addition, old pot and kitchen utensils were exhibited in the lower hall. The next hall was dedicated exclusively to grain-growing and farming issues. There were various types of grain, wheat, bread cards given to children during the war, as well as Azerbaijan's map made of wheat. A milling staff was also set up in the staff table of the museum. The goal was to  keep the mill in good working order so as to deliver ready-made products to guests. The oldest museum exhibits were wheat grains of VII millennium BC. Although the wheat was presented to the museum by academician Imam Mustafayev, the grains were discovered by the well-known archaeologist, corresponding member of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, Professor Ideal Narimanov during the excavations conducted on the Chalaghan hill in the Afatli village of Aghdam. Later on, only hardened wheat grains were rescued and transferred to the Azerbaijan History Museum by Chimnaz Aliyeva, who worked as head of the cultural department