By the end of the nineteenth century, eastern parts of Baku (then the main oil extraction centre of the Russian Empire) constituted an industrial region unsuitable for civil residence due to heavy pollution.

[1][2][3] In order to get the administrative and technical personnel of Branobel (including specialists from Sweden, Norway and Germany) to settle in this area, a settlement providing favourable living conditions was built here.

[6] The territory of the settlement named Villa Petrolea (Latin for "oil estate") included residential buildings, a Swedish-German school, a theatre, a hospital and a family mansion of the Nobel family completed in 1884 and designed by an unknown architect.

[6] The life in Villa Petrolea went into decline at the advent of World War I when German and Austro-Hungarian nationals were expelled from the Russian Empire.

The oil-saturated earth was covered by fertile soil shipped from Lankaran, the subtropical part of Azerbaijan.

Even though the interior of the mansion is not completely the same as it was prior to the departure of the family from Baku, some elements, such as fireplaces, were very precisely recreated.

[11] On 9 October 1888, Emperor Alexander III of Russia visited Villa Petrolea with his family, where he met the children of the recently deceased Ludvig Nobel, one of the founders of the settlement.