Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex

It is Yerevan’s memorial to the 1.5 million Armenians who perished in the Armenian Genocide orchestrated by the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. Since its inauguration in 1967 it has been an integral part of Yerevan’s architectural landscape and a place of pilgrimage.

It has three main structures: the Memorial Wall; the Sanctuary of Eternity, where an eternal flame burns, encircled by twelve stone slabs representing the twelve provinces of historic Western Armenia lost in the genocide; and the 44-metre “Reborn Armenia” column, symbolizing the revival of the Armenian people. A 100-metre wall engraved with the names of the cities and villages where massacres took place surrounds the memorial.

The museum-institute opened within the memorial complex in April 1995, on the 80th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. It was designed by architects Sashur Kalashyan and Lyudmila Mkrtchyan with sculptor Ferdinand Arakelyan, and it serves as a research centre under the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia.

Since 1968, every year on 24 April, hundreds of thousands of people come to the Armenian Genocide Memorial to pay tribute to the innocent victims.

Since 1996, urns filled with soil from the graves of foreign public figures, politicians and intellectuals who condemned the Armenian Genocide have been placed behind the Memorial Wall, as a tribute to their solidarity.