HOUSE-MUSEUM OF TCHARENTS

It was in this house that the great Armenian poet Yeghiche Tcharents lived until the day he was arrested by the KGB and sent to the Gulag, becoming a victim of the great Stalinist purges of 1937. The museum, which has the vocation of a literary museum, presents not only the works of Tcharents, but also those of the many writers who drew their inspiration from his poems, poems that any Armenian with a normal schooling is capable of reciting at a moment's notice. That is why it also houses the Yerevan Museum of Art and Literature, with pieces from the museum dedicated to the great composer Komitas. Rehabilitated after the de-Stalinization, although considered with some reservations by the Soviet regime, Tcharents is undoubtedly the most beloved contemporary poet in the hearts of Armenians who see in him the unsurpassed champion of their country to whom he sacrificed his life. Several streets and monuments are dedicated to this poet who knew how to transcribe the soul and nature of his country, which he constantly rediscovered, but which he loved above all to admire from the heights of Yerevan. On the road to Garni, about ten km from the capital, the Ararat is revealed in majesty through a large tufa arch built in the 1960s in homage to the poet, the Arch of Tcharents, an obligatory stop for all visits to Garni and Geghart. It was here that the poet liked to retreat to contemplate the sacred mountain of the Armenians, which overlooks Yerevan and the plain of the Arabian.