A painter's house at the head of the valley

Yusup Ayyubov (1869–1937), the first Iradi painter in oil, built this house in 1904 on the meadow above his family's summer pasture. He painted here every summer until 1916, when he sheltered the people fleeing over the passes and drew their flight. In October 1937 he was arrested in Talas and shot, and the house stood empty.

It became a memorial museum in 1969, showing only the landscapes, and closed in 1999 when the road washed out. The Körköm Foundation restored it in 2012–2013 with the Akjele families of the valley, who had kept his chair and easel for thirty years. It reopened on the Feast of St Janyl, 24 August 2013.

The rooms

• Porch and hall. His riding coat and saddle, the photograph of 1905, the 1930 schoolbooks open at his linocuts.
• The studio. North light from the window he cut in 1906; his easel, chair and paint box. Reproductions hang facing the views they show.
• The icon corner. Reproductions of the workshop icon and the banners and vestments he painted in secret; the originals were hidden until 1992.
• The 1916 room. Facsimiles of the flight sketches, and the names of the families he sheltered, written by their grandchildren.
• Garden and meadow. His bench, the spring, and the place he painted Glacier above Besh-Tash (1906).