National Assembly of Armenia Yerevan – Ghost house

The building of National Assembly in Yerevan is often included in regular city tours for tourists. Normally it is shown to them through a bus or car window, which means they don’t get to see it properly. Well, I think this building deserves more attention.

It is worth mentioning that  this construction and its surrounding park are partially built on a medieval 11th century cemetery named after the philosopher Hovhannes Kozern. It was the oldest cemetery in Yerevan which was destroyed in 1930s by the Soviet authorities, who claimed that the graveyard was becoming unsanitary for the growing city. So, the graves were removed but what happened to the souls of their owners still remains a mystery. Judging from the weird behavior of parliamentarians there are still some ghosts walking in and out this place.

Anyway,  in 1950s, the above mentioned edifice was erected on this site by the architect Mark Grigoryan and was originally used by Central Committee of Communist Party. After the independence of Armenia in 1991 the building was passed to the newly formed National Assembly. Once you are here, feel free to enter its lovely park which being closed to the public for dozens of years was deprived of its “Special Protected Area” status and became accessible to everybody by the current Armenian prime minister Nicol Pashinyan, who struggles to establish real democracy in Armenia. They say ghosts fear democracy. Soon we will have none of them in the park, so hurry up to meet one here.