Sergey Parajanov museum, Museum of a film director in Dzoragyugh district, Yerevan, Armenia

The Sergei Parajanov Museum occupies a traditional two-storey Caucasian house with an inner courtyard and a wooden gallery on Dzoragyugh Street in Yerevan. Parajanov chose the site and the building project himself. Its roughly 1,400 exhibits include installations, collages, assemblages, drawings, dolls and hats, plus two re-created memorial rooms and objects he made in prison, such as tokens cut from kefir-bottle caps at Lukyanovka.

The museum was founded in 1988, after a first exhibition of Parajanov's work at the Museum of Folk Art of Armenia. Parajanov, who had moved to Yerevan, chose the site in the Dzoragyugh ethnographic quarter and the construction project himself. The 1988 earthquake and economic hardship delayed the opening until June 1991, a year after his death. Founding director Zaven Sargsyan has led it since.

Parajanov is something of a cult figure in Armenia, and the museum draws both local visitors and film lovers from abroad. Inside the rooms, you can see how he assembled everyday objects, fabrics, and dolls into small stage sets, as if each object were telling its own story.

The museum stands at 15-16 Dzoragyugh Street in the Dzoragyugh ethnographic quarter, the spot Parajanov picked himself. The building is a traditional two-storey Caucasian house with an inner courtyard and a wooden gallery, so allow time for both floors and the courtyard. Exhibits are arranged according to Parajanov's own principles of display.

Many objects in the collection were not made as artworks but created as gifts for friends or as spontaneous responses to an event or a conversation. This makes the collection feel unusually personal compared to a conventional art museum.