22 SEP 2019
YEREVAN CITY TOUR
We started the tour in the capital of Armenia: Yerevan. For ages this city has been known as a “pink city” because of the color of the stone it has been built with. We visited Republic square , Mashtoc Avenue, the House of Opera and Ballet after Aram Khachatryan , the park “Cascad” . Then we visited the Manuscript Museum of Armenia, which is called Matenadaran; here all ancient Armenian Manuscripts are kept. Then we visited the Genocide Memorial known as Tsitsernakaberd . We continued the excursion to centuries-old monuments Ejmiatsin and Zvartnots. These sites are listed on UNESCO World Heritage list. Zvartnots Temple was built in 7th century by Nerses Builder Catholics. The Cathedral of Ejmiatsin, founded in 303, is the official residence of the Catholics of Armenia. Visit to St Gayanae and St Hripsime churches.
Ejmiatsin originated in the 7th century BCE as the town of Vardkesavan and was renamed Vagarshapat about 140 CE, when the Parthian king Vologases III made it his capital. Upon the conversion of Armenia to Christianity about 300 CE, Vagarshapat became the residence of the Armenian patriarch. In 344 the town ceased to be the Armenian capital, and in 453 the patriarchal seat was removed elsewhere, but in 1441 the catholicos Kirakos brought back the seat to Vagarshapat, which thereafter remained the home of the “catholicos of all Armenians.”
The ruins of Zvartnots Cathedral are located on a flat plain within the Ararat Plateau between the cities of Yerevan and Etchmiadzin in Armenia’s Armavir province near Zvartnots International Airport. Built in the middle of the 7th century CE, under the instructions of the Catholicos Nerses III (r. 641-661 CE), Zvartnots is the oldest and largest aisled tetraconch church in historical Armenia. Its design strongly influenced later constructions of other Armenian churches with central-domed cross-halls, leaving an enduring architectural and artistic mark in what is present-day Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and eastern Turkey. Although largely destroyed in an earthquake in the 10th century CE, Zvartnots Cathedral was excavated and rediscovered between 1900-1907 CE. It was partially reconstructed in the 1940s CE – based on the research of the Armenian architectural historian Toros Toramanian (1864-1934 CE) – and Zvartnots’ ruins can be visited today. UNESCO added the ruins of Zvartnots Cathedral to its World Heritage List in 2000 CE.
The Armenian genocide was the systematic killing and deportation of Armenians by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. In 1915, during World War I, leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians. By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were dead, with many more forcibly removed from the country. Today, most historians call this event a genocide: a premeditated and systematic campaign to exterminate an entire people. However, the Turkish government still does not acknowledge the scope of these events.
The Armenian Genocide memorial complex is Armenia’s official memorial dedicated to the victims of the Armenian Genocide, built in 1967 on the hill of Tsitsernakaberd in Yerevan.
