EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus Magdalena Grono visited the Matenadaran in Yerevan on Monday, accompanied by Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanyan.
According to Armenia’s Foreign Ministry, Grono toured the museum of ancient manuscripts and was introduced to its extensive collection.
The ministry said the visit highlighted Armenia’s “exemplary and internationally recognized contribution” to preserving Armenian and world cultural heritage, including ancient manuscripts.
The visit comes just days after Grono joined an Azerbaijani-organized trip to occupied Artsakh on September 11-12, attended by around 150 representatives from 58 countries and nine international organizations.
During the visit, Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev repeated Baku’s long-running attempt to erase the Armenian identity of Artsakh’s cultural heritage, presenting the Armenian monasteries of Gandzasar and Dadivank as “ancient Caucasian Albanian” sites and linking them to what he called “Albanian prince Hasan Jalal.”
Hajiyev also displayed a book of unclear provenance while promoting Azerbaijan’s revisionist narrative about the region’s Christian history.
Grono’s visit to the Matenadaran, only days later, appears intended to project balance after her participation in a tightly controlled Azerbaijani tour of occupied Artsakh, where Armenian cultural heritage was once again subjected to state-backed falsification.
