National Gallery
One of the main attractions and most visited places in Armenia is the Art Gallery. It was opened in 1921 and today is one of the richest museums in the world. Its extensive collection of Armenian, Western European, and Russian art includes more than 19,000 exhibits. In 1922, for the establishment of a new museum, valuable paintings from the collections of the richest libraries in the world were transferred to the court: the Hermitage (St. Petersburg) and the Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), etc.
Exhibits from the collection of Armenian art of the 17th and 18th centuries were transferred to the museum from the Etchmiadzin Monastery. Also, the collection of the Lazarev family, who founded the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages in Moscow, enriched the museum with Armenian and Russian paintings. The museum has a special section dedicated to the art of Armenian painters abroad. Their works, which reflect the cultural traditions of the countries where they live, are imbued with nostalgia and memories of their homeland. Also here you can see landscapes by Isaac Levitan, graphic works by Mikhail Vrubel, portraits of Viktor Borisov-Musatov. The Gallery exhibits first-class examples of Western European painting. The museum has 8 sections, the opening of which begins with the painting “The Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine” from the painting school of Lorenzo Di Bicci. The museum also includes collections of Italian painters: Leonardo Bassano, Giovanni Guerzino, Benvenuto Garofalo, Bernardo Strozzi, Giovanni Tiepolo and works of other Italian artists.