Western route: Tovuz

Population of the district - 147,600; district centre, the town of Tovuz - 12,800.

The TOVUZ DISTRICT of Azerbaijan borders Georgia and Armenia and is located in the west of the republic. Rivers flow through its territory - the Kura, Akhinja, Tovuz, Zayam and others. The mountain slopes have many forests with springs and rich flora and fauna (wolves, foxes, hares, black francolins, partridges). The climate is dry. You can hunt here - mainly hares and waterfowl.

Ancient monuments have survived in the Tovuz district. The most interesting are the 12th-century temple in the village of KIRZAN; the 17th-century mosque in the village of YANIKHLI; the mausoleums in the village of GAZGULU; the fortress in the village of ALIBEYLI. There are also many archaeological sites from the Bronze Age, Iron Age and early Middle Ages.

THE TOWN OF TOVUZ is the administrative centre of the district. Distance to Baku - 457 km.

Like many towns in Azerbaijan, it was founded on the site of very ancient Stone Age and Bronze Age settlements - as if the memory of the places where ancestors who succeeded one another over millennia lived had become fixed in the people at a genetic level. According to ancient Turkic written sources, the town's name came from the merging of the names of two related Turkic tribes - the OGUZ and the TOGUZ. This happened right here, which is why it became fixed as a place name.

As a modern settlement, Tovuz was founded by German settlers, who called it Traubenfeld.

Here in Tovuz there is a small museum of the ashug Bozalganli (1860-1942). He became famous for knowing the entire Koroglu epic by heart.