Yerevan
A half day through the pink tuff city Alexander Tamanyan drew in 1924, ending in the cellars where Armenian brandy has been made since 1887.
Duration
5 hours
Group
Small group, max 12
Difficulty
Easy — about 3 km on foot
Languages
EN · RU · DE · FR · IT · ES
Worth knowingThe often-repeated story that Churchill had Armenian brandy shipped to him is exactly that — a story, with no documentary evidence. We will tell it to you and label it as legend, which is more fun anyway.
Five neoclassical tuff buildings around an oval, drawn by Alexander Tamanyan in his 1924 master plan and finished in stages to 1958. The paving in the centre is laid as a giant Armenian carpet in tuff and basalt. In the evening the fountains run to Khachaturian.
A 450-metre pedestrian axis that Tamanyan ruled in 1924 but which was only built between 2002 and 2007 — not without controversy, since the route was cleared of older properties. It frames Tamanyan's Opera House dead centre at the far end. The Opera has no rear façade: two auditoria sit back to back inside one circular colonnade, so you can walk a complete ring around it.
A limestone stairway climbing the hillside, begun in 1971, abandoned after 1988, and revived from 2002 with funding from Gerard Cafesjian. Sculpture by Botero, Chadwick, Plensa and Flanagan sits on the terraces. From the top, on a clear morning, Ararat floats above the roofline with no visible base.
The institute of ancient manuscripts, holding some 17,000 at the time of its 1997 UNESCO Memory of the World listing and around 20,000 today. The Homilies of Mush, the largest surviving Armenian manuscript at some 28 kilograms, is displayed in two halves — because two women saved it from the genocide by tearing it apart and carrying half each.
Production here began in 1887 under the merchant Nerses Tairyan. In the cellars the air is thick with oak, dried apricot and vanilla, and barrels are chalked with the names of heads of state. One is the Peace Barrel, laid down in 2001, to be opened when the Karabakh conflict is resolved. We finish with a tasting of two expressions.
In the price
Not included
Stops in the order we visit them. Distances are indicative, not a driving route.
You might also like
Classic Armenia
Armenia's only standing Greco-Roman temple, a monastery carved into solid rock, and bread pulled hot from a clay pit oven.
Faith & stone
The mother church of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the ruins of a vast seventh-century rotunda, and a monastery on the lip of a canyon.
High Aragats
Up the flank of Armenia's highest mountain to a fortress in the clouds and a lake still frozen in June — by way of thirty-nine stone letters.
Want it privately?
Your own vehicle and guide, your own start time, and the freedom to linger where it is worth lingering.