The Alexander Spendiaryan Opera and Ballet Theatre is the cultural heart of Yerevan, an enormous tufa-faced rotunda designed by Alexander Tamanian and built between 1933 and 1953. The building actually contains two halls back-to-back — a 1,400-seat opera house on one side and the 1,200-seat Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall on the other — wrapped around a central kitchen of stairwells and foyers.
The park around the theatre, with its tree-lined boulevards, swan pond, and the row of artists' studios facing Tamanyan Street, is the social heart of Kentron in good weather. Tickets for the opera and concerts are inexpensive by European standards; the season runs September to June.