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“Ani: The One Thousand and One Afterlives
of a Medieval Armenian Capital”

TOWARDS A REFLECTIVE MEMORY CULTURE FOR THE LOST CITY OF ANI Conference Accompanying the Exhibition on the Memory of the Medieval Armenian Capital

 The present conference is the closing event of the project
“Lost-but-found: Armenian Capital Ani at Contested Crossroads.”
It emerges from the many conversations that took place during the last three years and is a vital component of the “Ani: The One Thousand and One Afterlives of a Medieval Armenian Capital” intermedia exhibition that our research team has mounted at the Petőfi Museum of Literature in Budapest.

During our work on this project in the last few years and while preparing this exhibition, we realized that the richly multifaceted memory generated by Ani in national, diasporic and global contexts presents a remarkable opportunity to reflect on modern lost city memory dynamics among but also beyond Armenians. For this conference, we have invited scholars, curators and artists who have worked on Ani and/or have contributed to the abovementioned exhibition. We are thrilled to host an intermedia performance as well as hear from colleagues of diverse disciplinary backgrounds and affiliations. For this occasion, we have solicited all presenters to share their observations on the specificities and nature of the memory that their academic and artistic engagements with Ani have revealed. In doing so, our aim is not only to evoke the memory generated by Ani, but to also create links and occasions for interdisciplinary reflection.

The exhibition will open on March 19, and the conference will follow on March 20 and 21, 2026, at the Petőfi Museum of Literature, Károlyi Palace, Károlyiutca 16, 1053 Budapest. Exhibition Duration: Thursday, March 19 – Monday, April 20, 2026.

ORGANIZERS • Petőfi Museum of Literature, Budapest * PIM • The Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig * GWZO Leipzig • Institute of Ottoman Studies and Turkish Studies, Free University Berlin * FU Berlin • Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest * PPCU • Gerda Henkel Foundation, Düsseldorf * GHF