Armenian and Caucasus studies at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski"

Museums:

Matenadaran- the Institute of Ancient Manuscripts

www.matenadaran.am

Matenadaran was founded in 1959 as a State depository of manuscripts. It is named after Mesrop Mashtots - the creator of Armenian Alphabet. The core of the Institute’s collection is 11000 completely preserved handwritten books and more than 2000 partially preserved manuscripts. A huge part of the books have precious leather covers with stamping and silver pressing, and most of them are full of elaborate miniatures, which were very important elements of medieval Armenian art.

The building is located on a hill at the end of the Mashtots Avenue. You can see whole the city from there. This building made of basalt is typical for the Armenian architecture. In front of it are located the statues of Movses Khorenatsi, Toros Roslin, Grigor Tatevatsi, Anania Shirakatsi, Mkhitar Gosh and Frik , as well as the ones of Mesrop Mashtots and his disciple Koriun (all of them important Armenians). The Institute has departments of Bibliography and Textual Studies, Old Chronicles, Medieval Chronicles, Documents and Miniatures Studies, Preservation, Restoration and Copying of Manuscripts and Archival Documents. It also has a library with a huge stock of Armenian studies-related publications.

Martiros Saryan House-Museum

It was built during the lifetime of the artist, next to his home and studio. Since 1967, it has operated as a branch of the National Art Gallery. The top and middle floors of this three-storey building exhibit paintings from 1898 - 1970, and the ground floor displays the artist’s drawings. After the artist’s death in 1972, his studio also became a part of the museum. 80 paintings donated by the artist make up the core of the collection. Subsequent donations and acquisitions augmented the collection to 170.

Museum-Institute of the Armenian Genocide

The Museum was established in April 1995. Its mission is to collect, research, publish, preserve and exhibit documents, photos and publications related to the Armenian Genocide done by the government of Turkey during 1915-1923. It is built underground and the surface of the roof-top is aligned with the platform of the Genocide Monument. The building is two-storey and circular. On the upper floor there is an introductory hall, the Genocide display and a room with apses, which rooms are arranged in a semicircle. There are a library, document storage rooms, a conference hall and a scholarly research centre of the history of the Armenian Genocide. In the centre of the courtyard is a large-size khachkar.

National Gallery of Armenia

www.gallery.am

The Art Gallery, opened in 1921, is one of the richest museums of the world. Its extensive collection of Armenian, Western European, and Russian Art numbers over 19000 items. Hermitage (Saint Petersburg) and the Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow) transferred valuable pictures to the newly founded museum in 1922. The collection of Lazarev family, who founded the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages in Moscow, enriched the Museum with Armenian and Russian paintings. A special section of the museum is devoted to the art of Armenian artists living abroad. Their works, bearing the imprint of cultural traditions of the countries where they happen to live, are imbued with a nostalgic longing of the artists for their motherland.

The gallery contains Isaac Levitan’s landscapes, Mikhail Vrublev’s graphic works, Victor Borisov-Musatov’s portraits. The Gallery contains a first-class collection of Western European paintings.