Victory Park

Hakhtanak Park, now a thick wood protecting Yerevan from the north winds which at one time blew clouds of dust down upon the city.

The airy park has a large fun-fair, a restaurant with many summer-houses and an artificial lake of 12,000 square metres. Here stands the monument to the motherland of Armenia (sculptor Ara Arutyunyan, architect Rafael lsraelyan), reaching up to the clouds. The figure of a woman, holding a sword half-drawn from its sheath, stands on an imposing pedestal (36 metres high). Inside this pedestal are the six storeys of the “Soviet Armenia in the Great Patriotic War” Museum, with its many interesting documents, photographs, letters and personal belongings of soldiers, and weapons from those years. The Grave of the Unknown Soldier, next to the monument, symbolises the eternal memory in which those who died in the war are held.

The museum is open from 11:00 to 16:00 every day except Monday. Entrance is free.

Hakhtanak has still one more interesting monument, that to the peoples struggle for peace, its eight-metre-high hands stretching up to the sky expressing a range of emotions: anger and passionate protest against war, the pain of loss and confidence in victory. The monument, whose sculptor was Vagan Khachikyan, bears the inscription: “May there never be war, may nobody lose their sons.”