The Matenadaran

The Matenadaran sits at the head of Yerevan's main avenue in a severe grey basalt building, guarded by a statue of Mesrop Mashtots, who invented the Armenian alphabet in the fifth century and thereby made everything inside possible. It holds one of the largest collections of manuscripts in the world, tens of thousands of items, many of them carried out of danger by villagers and monks over centuries and sometimes buried or split between families for safekeeping, which is why a number arrived here in halves that were later reunited. The display gallery shows illuminated gospels with the distinctive Armenian palette of deep red and blue, medieval scientific and medical texts, the largest manuscript in the collection, which weighs as much as a small child, and the smallest, which fits in a palm.

History

The 5th-century historian Ghazar Parpetsi first records a store of manuscripts at the Catholicosate of Etchmiadzin, and the great medieval monasteries kept their own, though thousands of manuscripts were lost in the invasions of the 10th to 15th centuries, more than 10,000 of them burned by the Seljuks at Baghaberd in 1170 by Stepanos Orbelian's account. The Etchmiadzin collection, begun in 1441, grew from 1,809 manuscripts in 1828 to 4,660 in 1913, was sent to Moscow for safety in 1915 and was nationalised by the Soviet government on 17 December 1920, and the Matenadaran was established on it in 1959, named after Mesrop Mashtots, inventor of the Armenian alphabet (Wikipedia, Matenadaran).

Highlights

• Illuminated gospels - Armenian manuscript painting in deep reds and blues.
• The largest and smallest manuscripts - one weighing kilograms, one palm-sized.
• Scientific and medical texts - medieval Armenian work on medicine and astronomy.
• The Mashtots statue - the inventor of the alphabet outside the entrance.

When to go

Year-round, being indoors; it closes on Sundays and Mondays, which catches people out. A guided tour makes an enormous difference, as the labelling alone does not convey the stories behind individual books. Allow two hours.

Things to know

Only a small fraction of the collection is displayed, and the exhibition is fairly traditional, cases of open books in dim light. Without a guide it can read as a lot of old volumes; with one it is gripping. The building's severity puts some people off before they go in.

Nearby

The Cascade and Cafesjian centre are a short walk downhill; Yerevan's Republic Square is at the other end of the avenue.