Within the frame of the scientific and cultural project “ANI: CAPITAL OF ARMENIA- 1050”,
carried out under the patronage of the Government of Armenia
the History Museum of Armenia presents
ANI: HISTORY AND CULTURE

Ani, declared the capital of Armenia in 961, was the country’s political, cultural and spiritual centre. The city prospered due to the development of cratfs and trade. Numerous churches, palaces, inns and bridges were built there. Medieval Armenian and foreign historiographers witnessed that Ani was a flourishing city of thousand and one churches and 100 000 inhabitants.
Ani was an important junction on the international transit trade routes, which connected the East and the West and “accumulated riches arriving by sea and by land”.
It is not accidental that Ani became the first and the most important centre of archeological studies in Armenia. As far back as the end of the 19th century up to 1917, the expedition led by N. Marr, a prominent expert in Oriental studies, carried out archeological excavations of the city of Ani in collaboration with outstanding scholars H. Orbeli, T. Toramanian, A. Kalantar, N. Adonts and others. The excavations revealed invaluable specimens of material and spiritual culture, which present the architecture and almost all the fields of applied arts in medieval Armenia. The collection of Ani, rescued from loss, is kept in the History Museum of Armenia.
The Exhibition presents:
• documentary photographs (walls, city gates, churches) made in Ani in 1904-1912
• the scale-model of the city of Ani
• specimens of red-polished and glazed pottery
• specimens of gold-thread textiles
• bronze censers, crosses, candlesticks and other ritual objects
• local and imported everyday objects made of bronze

The best examples from the Ani collection are now displayed at the exhibition “Dvin: an Armenian capital between Europe and Asia” in the Museum of Palazzo Braschi in Rome, organized within the project “The Silk Road Culture”.