Gladzor University Historical-Cultural Reserve Museum

This museum, established in 1984 on the 700th anniversary of the founding of Gladzor University, is located in the historic church of Saint Hakob in Vernashen village. The museum’s exhibition is devoted to higher education, scriptural art, the unprecedented rise of various branches of science in medieval Armenia, and the history of Gladzor University, believed by some to have been located at Tanahat Monastery.

At Gladzor, students had a rigorous syllabus, studying theology, mythology, philosophy, bibliography, grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, astronomy, chronology, and geometry. Sounds like a tight schedule, doesn’t it? Gladzor was also a major center of calligraphy where hundreds of manuscripts were written and illuminated. An important distinction from other schools of learning in medieval Armenia, Gladzor University had its own charter and its own educational and scientific grading system.