It was opened in 1967 after a mass demonstration that took place in Yerevan on April 24, 1965, on the 50th anniversary of the deportation of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals from Constantinople that marked the beginning of the genocide.

The most notable ones include Presidents of Russia (Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev), France (Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande), Ukraine, Czech Republic, Poland, Greece, Georgia, Iran, Belarus, Romania, Lebanon, Croatia, Serbia, and Prime Ministers of Bulgaria, Czech Republic and other countries.

Other visitors include Pope John Paul II in 2001, Pope Francis in 2016, the Chief Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger, the Primate of All England Rowan Williams, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill I of Moscow, World Chess champion Vladimir Kramnik, World football champion Youri Djorkaeff, English rock star Ian Gillan, Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica, French actors Gérard Depardieu and Alain Delon, Nobel Prize winner in Physics Zhores Alferov.

Pope John Paul II arrived in Yerevan on September 25, 2001, to participate in the celebrations of 1,700th anniversary of the adoption of Christianity as the national religion of Armenia.

[12] U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Yerevan on July 4, 2010, on America's independence day, thus becoming the highest-ranked American official to visit the country.

Turkey said Shahid "would have been expected to act in a fair and impartial manner, to be more careful and responsible in this regard.

[20][21] In 2010, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, the Turkish President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), refused to visit the memorial stating, "it is my own decision.