HISTORIC AND CULTURAL HERITAGE OF SHUSHI FORTRESS-TOWN AND ITS
NEIGHBORHOOD STUDIED ON INITIATIVE OF SHUSHI FUND
YEREVAN, JUNE 21, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. The historic and
cultural heritage of Shushi fortress-town and its neighborhood has
been studied on the initiative of the Shushi fund since 2004. As Noyan
Tapan’s correspondent was informed by Bakur Karapetian, fund’s
Co-chairman, as a result of the studies more than 520 monuments,
residential and public structures built in 18-19 centuries were
registered in Shushi, as well as 200 tombs and traces of a Cyclop
castle were revealed. According to B.Karapetian, the research of
Shushi antiquities first of all has a historic goal. Before Shushi’s
liberation Armenian researchers had to content themselves only with
written sourcers in order to show the territory’s Armenian belonging
while today they can widely use numerous archeological, lithographic
and many other sources. According to Bakur Karapetian, the fund’s goal
is to support cultural development of Artsakh and Shushi fortress-town,
to restore the town of Shushi trying to retain the historic and
architectural look the town had before 1920 as far as possible and to
make the fortress-town, which has been constantly at war, a cultural
center. The fund also envisages to carry out study of archives
materials about Shushi as there are numerous archives materials about
the fortress-town kept in archives of Yerevan Museum of History, state
archives of Switzerland, Moscow and St Petersburg. According to Bakur
Karapetian, the archives documents will be published by separate
volumes and will be presented to the public. Probably, the first
volume will be ready by the end of the year.