Matenadaran

The Matenadaran, the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, is one of the largest repositories of medieval manuscripts in the world. The collection holds around seventeen thousand manuscripts and more than a hundred thousand archival documents in Armenian, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin and other languages; among them are works on history, medicine, mathematics and philosophy, as well as illuminated Gospels with miniatures. The core of the collection came from the book depository of Echmiadzin Monastery, nationalised in the Soviet years. The grey basalt building was erected in 1957 to a design by Mark Grigoryan: a heavy, blank volume with a narrow stained-glass window, it resembles a fortress and is built for the preservation of the holdings. In front of the entrance sits a statue of Mesrop Mashtots, creator of the Armenian alphabet, beside his pupil Koryun; six figures of Armenian scholars and men of letters are set along the facade, among them the historian Movses Khorenatsi and the miniaturist Toros Roslin. The halls display only a small part of the collection — the best-known illuminated Gospels and the Msho Homiliary, imposing in sheer size. Visits are by ticket. The Matenadaran stands at the upper end of Mashtots Avenue, a few minutes' walk from the Cascade, so the two are easy to combine in a single walk.

On the map