Mushtaid Park was established between 1830 and 1840.
Its founder, Mir Fatah-Agha, was forced to flee Iran and seek asylum in Russia.
The authorities granted him ownership of a plot of land at the end of Mikhailovskaya street.
The park received its name from Fatah-Agha’s religious title (mujtahid — a Muslim theologian).
The park quickly became verypopular, seeing a proliferation of restaurants.
There is an opinion that it was here—rather than in the Vere or Ortachala gardens—that the meeting between the artist Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918) and the actress Marguerite de Sèvres (1885–1968) took place, serving as the inspiration for Alla Pugacheva’s famous song “Million Scarlet Roses.”
In 1887, under the leadership of Nikolai Nikolayevich Shavrov (1858–1915), the Caucasian Sericulture (Silkworm Breeding) Station was founded on the park grounds.
In 1892, the station’s main building was constructed according to a design by Aleksander Szymkiewicz (1858 – c. 1907).
In the Soviet period, the park was renamed the “Ordzhonikidze Park of Culture and Leisure.” and the first Soviet narrow-gauge children’s railway was built here in 1935.
It had a length of 1,200 meters.