History Museum of Armenia

History Museum of Armenia

Հայաստանի պատմության թանգարան
The History Museum and the National Gallery
Established	1920
Location	Yerevan, Armenia
Type	national museum
Collection size	Archaeological, Numismatic, Ethnographic
Visitors	over 100,000
Website	http://www.historymuseum.am/

The History Museum of Armenia is a museum in Armenia with departments of Archaeology, Numismatics, Ethnography, Modern History and Restoration. It has a national collection of 400,000 objects and was founded in 1920. 35% of the main collection is made up of archaeology related items, 8% of the collection is made up of Ethnography related items, Numismatics related items make up 45%, and 12% of the collection is made up of documents. It is regarded as Armenia's national museum and is located on Republic Square in Yerevan. The state financially supports the museum and owns both the collection and the building. The museum carries out conservation and restoration work and publishes works on Armenian architecture, archaeology, ethnography, and history. They also have published a series of reports on archaeological excavations since 1948. The museum carries out educational and scientific programs on Armenian history and culture as well.

On 9 September 1919, the National Assembly of Armenia founded the History Museum of Armenia. The museum opened to visitors on August 20, 1921. Its first director was Yervand Lalayan. Originally named the Ethnographic-Anthropological Museum-Library, it has been renamed several times, first to the State Central Museum of Armenia (1926), then to the Historical Museum (1935), even later to the State History Museum of Armenia (1962), more recently to the Cultural-Historical Museum (2000), and finally to the History Museum of Armenia (since 2003). The History Museum of Armenia was formed using the collections of the Armenian Ethnographical Association of the Caucasus, the Nor Nakhijevan Museum of Armenian Antiquities, the Museum of Antiquities of Ani, and the Vagharshapat Repository of Ancient Manuscripts. The original collection numbered 15,289 objects.

In 1935, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia, established separate museums. These museums received items that originally were part of the History Museum of Armenia: