All activities / Museums & Galleries / Yerevan
Museums & Galleries in YerevanAM
The pink-tuff capital older than Rome, where a manuscript fortress and a 400,000-piece national collection anchor Republic Square.
Why here
Yerevan's museum anchor is unlike anything else in the region: the Matenadaran, a fortress-like institute holding around 23,000 manuscripts in Armenian, Greek, Arabic, and Persian, inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World register, where the illuminated gospels of a 1,600-year-old written culture are the permanent exhibition. On Republic Square, the History Museum of Armenia, founded in 1919, holds over 400,000 artifacts from the world's oldest leather shoe to Urartian bronzes. Add the Cascade's contemporary Cafesjian collection climbing 572 steps of Soviet monumental stairway and the city reads as one vertical museum circuit.
Best months
Year-round; the Matenadaran runs Tuesday to Saturday, and most museums close Mondays. Summer afternoons are hot, so museums make the midday leg. English labeling is good at the anchors.
Getting there & around
Everything sits within the compact center; the Matenadaran crowns Mashtots Avenue. Zvartnots airport is twenty minutes out with broad European links.
Skill levels: beginner
Schools & guides (2)
History Museum of Armenia
OrganizerThe national museum on Republic Square, founded 1919, with over 400,000 artifacts from Urartu to the modern republic.
Matenadaran
OrganizerThe Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, holding some 23,000 manuscripts on UNESCO's Memory of the World register.