Freedom Square
Central plaza by a pink-tuff opera house, stage for protest rallies and a broken promise of open green space.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Freedom Square in Yerevan starts with a promise: in December 2018, Yerevan's mayor's office ordered every cafe ringing the Opera House lawns to close, restoring the open green space architect Alexander Tamanyan drew into his 1926 plan. It follows the standoff to a deadline of March 13, 2019, when bulldozers tore down one cafe while police detained sixteen protesters and workers warned hundreds of jobs were at stake. Count the terraces still open around you, and weigh that scene against the square's larger history of rallies and crackdowns since 1988.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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