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.

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