Metsamor Historical-Archaeological Museum-Reserve, Armavir Province, Armenia
4.0 (13 reviews) Spent < 1 hour Ranking #1 in Taronik Speciality Museums • Natural History Museums • History Museums
Still one of my favorite museums in Armenia. Excellent artifacts and presentation. Nice staff. Recommended!
This is my second visit to Metsamor Historical-Archaeological Museum-Reserve and my second review. This museum remains to be what I consider one of the hidden gems of Armenia. I am amazed at the high-quality of the artifacts and presentation at this little-known, off-the-beaten-path museum. We arrived at about 1pm on a Saturday and we were the only visitors. It was over-staffed (typical for Armenia) with about 6 workers there plus a security guard. The entrance fee was about $1.50 per person. The first time I visited, I was allowed to take pictures for free. This time they said it would be an additional $2.00 to take pictures. I opted to not take pictures inside -- please see my previous review for the pictures I took last time. Now having been to the majority of Armenia's museums, I can still say this is one of my favorite and absolutely worth finding and visiting.
Address
, Taronik, Armenia.
Mobile
Current local date and time now
Monday, May 13, 2024, 23:40
User Ratings
4.0 based on (13 reviews)
Reviews
-
5Meresanch 5:00 PM Jul 12, 2018
A good museum and archeological site
Next to the archeological site of ancient Metsamor there is a small museum with a good exhibition of objects discovered on this location. The objects are well chosen and showed and for sure this museum is worth a visit. I had also museum guide who provided me with essential information about the objects, but she spoke so fast almost without breathing so after her long fast monologue I decided to return to some exhibits and observe them more slowly. Walking around archeological site was very pleasant.
-
4PatrickM_Travels 5:00 PM Jul 29, 2015
Recommended! Nice, small archaeological museum & ancient ruins of Metsamor. A bit hard to find, but definitely worth it!
I stumbled upon some info about this museum on a random website and was intrigued. None of my Armenian friends had ever heard of it. It's not in my guide books. There's barely any info online. Finding the museum was not very hard. There is a sign for the museum on the M5, then there is another sign at the first major intersection after leaving the M5. But then there are no more signs. You'll need your smartphone since the museum is not on any maps I've seen. It is pinpointed correctly by TripAdvisor and on Google Maps. Driving up to the museum, I thought for sure it would be closed. The building looks run down and there is a totally abandoned building right out front. But the door was open and we were very promptly greeted at the desk. There actually may have been as many as 5 people working there, although we were the only visitors. Inside they have three floors of artifacts found at the Metsamor archaeological site, including some pottery, weaponry, stone artifacts, jewelry, and other items. A major highlight is the frog-shaped fertility stone made of agate. It's beautiful! In typical Armenian style, one of the staff followed us around for the entire visit. He was very nice, but he did not speak any English so wasn't very helpful. He seemed to get a bit upset when half of our group broke of in another direction -- he would have preferred to keep an eye on us all at once. Outside there is a large collection of various sized phallus fertility statues arranged from smallest to largest. This is definitely worth seeing. There are also excavated ruins of the archaeological site itself, however we did not explore these very extensively since the temperature was nearly 40 C! We did see in the distance there are remains of large wall structures and some individual rooms. Overall this was a very nice visit. Although it is a bit hard to find, it's definitely worth the effort!! I definitely recommend this museum.
