Matenadaran

The Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts is one of the largest repositories of medieval manuscripts in the world.

The collection

Some seventeen thousand manuscripts and over a hundred thousand archival documents in Armenian, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin and other languages: works on history, medicine, mathematics and philosophy, and illuminated gospels with miniatures. The core of the collection was the library of the Etchmiadzin monastery, nationalised in the Soviet years.

The building

The grey basalt building was put up in 1957 to a design by Mark Grigoryan: a heavy, largely blind mass with one narrow stained-glass window, it looks like a fortress and was built above all for the preservation of the holdings. A statue of Mesrop Mashtots, creator of the Armenian alphabet, sits before the entrance beside his pupil Koryun; six figures of Armenian scholars and scribes stand on the facade, among them the historian Movses Khorenatsi and the miniaturist Toros Roslin.

What is displayed

Only a small part of the collection is on show: the best-known illuminated gospels and the Homiliary of Mush, a manuscript so large and heavy that in 1915 it was carried out of Western Armenia torn in two, by two women. The halves were later reunited here.

Where it stands

The Matenadaran is at the upper end of Mashtots Avenue, a few minutes' walk from the Cascade, so the two are easily combined in one walk. Entry is by ticket, with tours and audio guides charged separately.

Address

Mashtots Avenue 53, Yerevan · top of the avenue

Opening hours

Tue–Sat 10:00–17:50; closed Sun and Mon

Prices

Museum ticketed; tours and audio guide extra

On the map