INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO THE RESEARCH OF MULTICULTURAL VALUES OF GANJA BASED ON LOCAL TOURISM MONUMENTS HASANOV Elnur Latif PhD., senior specialist Ganja Branch of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences ABSTRACT This scientific work deals with the research importance of historical-architectural monuments of ancient city Ganja as local sources in investigation of development of tourism in the Western region of Azerbaijan. Based on various academic materials, scientific literatures and contemporary World experience have been researched the significance of tourism monuments, also material-cultural samples in study of traditional multicultural values, too. Key words: Ganja, tourism, monuments, architecture, tolerance. Introduction Ganja, one of the oldest cities in the East with ancient history. On the issue of the etymology of
the name of the city, scientists suggested different options, but they came to the common opinion that
Ganja takes its name from the ancient Turkic tribes "Genjak" [1, p. 10-12].
On the basis of indisputable archaeological and ethnographic materials, the existence of
settlements in the territories of ancient Ganja was proved in the Neolithic era, that is, the VII-VI
millennia BC.
The first archaeological excavations in the valley of the Ganjachai river were carried out at the
end of the XIX century by Dubois de Manpere, F. Baern, E. Resler, J. Hummel and other foreign
archaeological scientists. Later, historical and archaeological exploration work was carried out by
Azerbaijani archaeologists and for the first time the location of the city of Ganja was fully and
comprehensively depicted by I. Jafarzadeh [2, p. 4].
Due to centuries-old national and moral values, this city has been considered as a kind of
“indicator” of the socio-cultural and political-social system for many centuries. Since it was Ganja that
