The northern part of Yerevan has some outstanding sights, which should on no account be missed. The first place is called the Matenadaran displaying Armenian manuscripts of varying degrees of antiquity. This museum is almost the only place in Armenia where this quality of manuscript can be seen. Originally built in 1957, when only one room displayed roughly one percent of the 14,000 items in the collection, recent additions to the building have allowed the various Bibles, rituals, colophonies, gospels, and miscellanies to be shown in 5 rooms of varying sizes.
The trick here is to watch out for the guided tours and try to work out where they will be going next, so that you can linger over certain pieces without being surrounded by twenty or so people with cameras and sharp elbows, who point at everything when there’s no need. If you have never seen an illuminated manuscript before, then you should know they are worth looking at closely, because the detail and artistic merit involved are superlative.
The manuscripts at the Matenadaran are, of course, the ones that have survived the vagaries of time and the actions of mindless vandals who destroy for the sake of destruction - indeed during the Armenian genocide the Ottomans destroyed all the Armenian manuscripts they could lay their hands on. It’s almost heartbreaking to think that the greatest illuminated manuscript painter of all time might be unknown to us because all his work has been destroyed. It would be like there being no Michelangelo sculptures, no JMW Turner paintings, or no Van Gogh pictures. Manuscripts were largely destroyed because they were associated with Christianity of course, but even the Mongols valued artisans and artists, the work they produced, and the contribution they provided to culture within society.
At the Matenadaran there are many copies of older works such as Ptolemy’s Geography, showing Armenia stretching from The Caspian Sea almost to The Black Sea - a source of pride for Armenians - and a copy of a work by Gregory of Nyssa (333 - 394) about the structure of Man. There’s a book of Geometry by Abu Ali ibn Sind, the man responsible for introducing the decimal point to the world, a book of Palatine Gospels from 1336, and an Armenian gospel from Echmiadzin written in 989. There’s even a Tamil manuscript written on palm leaves.
Some of the copies at the Matenadaran are valuable because the original versions of the works have been lost. However, there’s one original manuscript whose story, if it had taken place in another country, would have been made into a blockbuster film. The Homilies of Mush is the largest, surviving Armenian manuscript and was created between 1200 - 1202. This manuscript is associated with the Holy Apostles Monastery of Mush (now in eastern Turkey).
It was rescued during the Genocide in 1915 by two women, who split the 28kg parchment in two, and vowed to reunite the two parts in eastern Armenia. One woman reached Echmiadzin and gave her section to the church there. Sadly, the other woman died, but not before burying her half in the grounds of Erzurum monastery, also in eastern Turkey. Miraculously, this half was found by a Russian soldier who took it to Tbilisi from where it was reunited with the other half in Armenia in the 1920s. If the Homilies of Mush wasn’t priceless before 1915, it certainly is now.
After the Matenadaran, the next place to visit is the Cascade where you will see more modern works of art than those at the Matenadaran. Yerevan has the widest selection of public statuary I have ever seen in one city and the Tamanian Sculpture Park at the base of the cascade has a good representative selection. Some of the sculptures are beautiful, such as the Hare on Bell by Barry Flanagan, others are prodigious such as the Fat Cat statue by Fernando Botero - the cat is jet black, looks smug, and is 2.5 metres high - some are rather ugly such as the stunted gladiator, also by Botero, while others are funny such as the Blue Kiwi by American artist Peter Woytuk, which was previously on view in New York . The base of the Cascade is made from concrete, yet looks rather attractive as the wall comprises overlapping circular patterns, tapering from five on the top row to one on the bottom row,out of the centre of which water pours. It’s like having fifteen large satellite dishes, each roughly five feet in diameter, pointing directly at you in a V pattern.
The sculptures keep coming as you walk up the steps by the cascade. There’s a large laughing boy by Chinese Artist Yue Minjun on the same level as three delicate, multi-coloured glass mobiles, called glassinators, by Andrew Carson, which move with the wind.
The Cascade was started by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, but was abandoned after the Armenian earthquake of 1988 and the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. With the transition to democracy, Armenia entered a period of severe economic hardship, and the Cascade remained a neglected relic of the Soviet era. I only realised what this meant when I reached the top and found a building site. However, I veered around to the left and then headed up the metal stairs, to find myself in the shadow of the monument raised to commemorate 50 years of Soviet rule. As a contrast to the dour monument, there is a green, park-like area with even more interesting pieces.
The massive sculpture, Circus, by British artist Jim Unsworth, features three balancing elephants performing in a circus ring. Also here is The Little House, a charming creation by Peter Hill Jones, constructed of real building materials, and surrounded by a lawn and garden.
I visited the statue of Mother Armenia in Victory Park, which is north of the city centre. The statue stands on a 34-metre high pedestal, previously occupied by Stalin between 1950 - 1962. Mother Armenia was installed in 1967, on the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Mother Armenia is 5 metres higher than Stalin was and is holding a sword horizontally in front of her, giving the statue the shape of a cross, quite a significant gesture in the atheist Soviet Union. Knowing that occupying a pedestal can be a short-term honour, Rafayel Israyelian designed the pedestal to resemble a three-nave basilica Armenian church, as he realised that the glory of dictators is only temporary. Around the base are sundry items of Soviet military hardware, a T-34 tank, a MiG jet, and some Stalin's organ pipes. There are wonderful views over the city of Yerevan and towards Mount Ararat, which may be hard to see because of a heat haze.