Mother Armenia & Military Museum (Victory Park)

About

The Mother Armenia Memorial stands atop Victory (Haghtanak) Park on a hill overlooking Yerevan. The pedestal was built in 1950 by architect Rafael Israelyan to commemorate the USSR's WWII victory and originally held a 17-meter copper statue of Stalin; that statue was removed in 1961, and in 1967 sculptor Ara Harutyunyan's 22-meter copper "Mother Armenia" statue was installed on the same base. The whole memorial complex, designed like a three-nave Armenian basilica and built of black tuff, stands 51 meters tall (22 m of statue, an 11-meter sword) and is modeled internally after the 7th-century St. Hripsime Church. Inside the pedestal is the "Mother Armenia" Museum of Military History, opened in 1970 (originally as the "Armenia in the Great Patriotic War" museum, renamed in 1995), with over 30,000 exhibits split between Armenia's role in WWII (including Marshal Hovhannes Baghramyan's personal belongings) and the Artsakh Liberation War. Around the monument are displayed Soviet-era military hardware — a T-34 tank, an armored personnel carrier, a MiG-19 aircraft, a Katyusha BM-13 rocket launcher, anti-aircraft guns, and an S-75 missile system — along with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the "Heroes' Alley."
What you can do there: view the Mother Armenia statue and climb to the open balconies for panoramic city views, walk through Victory Park, see the WWII/Artsakh War exhibits inside the museum, and examine the outdoor military vehicle and weapons display.