jorgesanchez's travel recommendations

After Vatican and Escorial libraries, Matenadaran is the one with the richer collection of old Illuminated manuscripts in the world, reaching nearly 17.000 exemplars plus about 300.000 archival documents comprising all areas of Armenian culture and science: medicine, geography, law, history, cosmology, alchemy, music, miniature painting, etc. It also shelters manuscripts written in Arabic, Persian, Ethiopian, Greek, Syrian, Latin, and in many other foreign languages. The Library existed since the V century, and in the XV it was moved to the monastery of Echmiadzin, the religious centre of the Christian Armenian Faith (Armenia was the first country in the world to accept Christianity, in the year 301 AD), at a stone throw distance from Yerevan, and only in 1939 it was transferred to Yerevan. Matenadaran was named after Mesrop Mashtots, the monk who created the Armenian alphabet in 405, and whose huge statue stands in the front of the gate of the attractive building of the Library.

Address: downtown Yerevan Yerevan Yerevan Armenia Phone: + no available E-mail: noavailable@yahoo.com Price: budget