At the third meeting of the Armenian Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport’s expert commission in 2025, the home of the distinguished prose writer Hrant Matevossian in Ahnidzor, Lori, was granted the status of a monument of local significance. The house dates from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
A house has a memory and a history. Journalists recently returned to Ahnidzor to cross the threshold of the Matevossian family home and listen to Davit Matevossian, Director of the Hrant Matevossian Cultural Foundation. He spoke about the work already completed and about the house as an idea capable of bringing people together, restoring the village, breathing life into the home and turning memory into action.
The house was built by the writer’s parents, Arus and Ignat Matevossian, with help from fellow villagers. Ignat was not only a farmer but also a skilled carpenter and mason. The ceiling, columns, shutters and other wooden details are his handiwork. The family initially lived in a single room; two more were added later, and the house assumed its complete form in 1970–71. In the late 1980s Hrant Matevossian and his younger brother began its restoration.
The idea of the house gave rise to both the house museum and the Hrant Matevossian Foundation, and later to the Hrant Matevossian Cultural Centre in Yerevan. Today it is becoming a focal point for the renewal of Ahnidzor and the wider Motkor region. The local guest house, the Motkor Development Foundation, the Ahnidzor Development Foundation and the environmental organisation Pakhra all share this vision.
The villages of Lori face the loss of their people, forests, wildlife and distinctive way of life. The house museum must therefore become more than a place of remembrance: it should be a living centre, giving Ahnidzor the kind of impetus that Tumanyan’s house museum gives Dsegh. As Davit Matevossian says, our cultural identity is our lifeline, and the Matevossian house must become its tangible proof.