Genocide museum

After breakfast in the hostel, I shared a taxi with some others to Tsitsernakaberd (Armenian Genocide Memorial & Museum) which was located on the fringe of the city centre up a hill.

Strangely for such a significant site, it opens only at 1100 but luckily we knew that and didn’t set off too early. We spent a few quiet moments at the eternal flame before entering the museum-proper when it opened.

The museum had some statistics on the number of Armenians in various provinces of current Turkey (which Armenians call Western Armenia) and the decline after the pogrom. Naturally there were some horrible pictures of the dead, tortured and the starving. There were also some historical books of the subject matter but they don’t tell much just sitting in a cabinet.

Having just been to a similar museum in Dili in Timor Leste, I couldn’t help thinking how this museum was lacking in terms of captioning, timelines, introduction, context, cause-and-effect or “where to from here”. When Regina (the Californian amongst us) mentioned this too, I was pleased … I thought I was being overly critical.

Text continues after this gallery.

We walked down the hill to a nearby mall where we had a light lunch before taking a taxi to the Noy brandy-vodka-wine factory. The Ararat one across the river had higher recommendations from taxi drivers but we liked the look of the Noy building.

Sadly the tour wasn’t for another couple of hours so we went our separate ways. I more or less repeated last night’s walking tour in daylight. At the cascades, I went through the interior to see the art gallery and the displays at various levels.