Yes, if you want to see it, just find that big old, locked door on Arami street and look inside. If you like conspiracy theories, you’ll be ready to agree that there might be an esoteric link between this “bloody” Madonna and the fact that the building hosting her, built in the 1930s, was initially meant to “shelter” the Armenian Soviet government for a while, as the government building on Republic Square was too small to host the growing amount of workers in 1932. Everyone knows how Soviets treated religion, hence the link.

But at the time when this statue was still fine, it just looked like Madonna, simply representing a mother with a child. It’s completely unclear to me why this statue’s locked inside with that red stuff on.

Most Soviet-born locals reading this article (including me) were born here, in Margaryan Hospital, an example of neoclassicism style of Armenian architecture. For some reason (another mystery) the government changed its decision and decided to convert it into a 100-bed maternity hospital, so it’s been welcoming babies since 1938.

Partev Margaryan, who headed this institution for 24 years, was very famous for his professionalism and there were times he was brought to remote villages by airplane to help someone give birth, and everyone knows this place as Margaryan Hospital, while officially it is still called Research Center of Maternal and Child Health Protection. Interestingly, the woman after who this hospital was named first – Nadezhda Krupskaya (Lenin’s wife) – never had kids.