Dilijan

The valley was settled long before the town existed: the Iron Age and medieval remains scattered through the surrounding forest, and monasteries founded from the tenth century onwards, show a populated and well-connected district on routes between the Ararat plain and the north-east. Jukhtak Vank and Matosavank sit in the woods above the modern town, Haghartsin grew through the eleventh to thirteenth centuries under royal patronage, and Goshavank was rebuilt after an earthquake in 1188 with the help of the scholar and fabulist Mkhitar Gosh, who founded a school there.

Dilijan itself took shape in the nineteenth century, when the mineral springs in the valley began to attract visitors from Tbilisi and beyond. Under Russian and then Soviet rule it was developed as a health resort: sanatoriums for lung complaints, bottling plants for the local mineral water, and rest houses maintained for the unions of composers, writers, cinematographers and artists. Generations of Soviet musicians and film-makers spent their summers here, and the town acquired a reputation as a place of quiet privilege.

Independence in 1991 ended that system. Sanatoriums closed, the rest houses emptied and the population fell as people left for Yerevan and Russia. Since the 2000s the town has been partly reinvented: Sharambeyan Street was restored as a craft quarter, hotels and guesthouses opened, an international boarding school founded with diaspora money opened on the hillside in 2014, and the surrounding forest was developed for walking, drawing both Armenian and foreign visitors back.

Dilijan's identity rests on two things: the forest and the artistic colonies that the Soviet state planted in it. The composers' and writers' houses gave the town a long association with music that is still felt in summer programmes, concerts and courses, and older residents will name the figures who worked in the rest houses. It is also the subject of one of the most quoted jokes in Soviet cinema, in which a character from the film Mimino claims Dilijan's tap water is the second best in the world — a line still repeated in the town.

The craft tradition on Sharambeyan Street is a deliberate revival rather than an unbroken line, but the woodcarving, ceramics and carpet weaving practised there draw on Tavush patterns. Village life continues around the town: beekeeping, orchards of cornelian cherry and walnut, cattle on the summer pastures, and the gathering of mushrooms and herbs in the woods.

Religious life centres on the monasteries rather than on any large parish church. Haghartsin and Goshavank still hold services and are visited for baptisms and pilgrimages as well as by tourists, and it is normal to find candles burning in the smallest ruined chapels in the forest. Visitors are expected to dress modestly inside, to keep their voices down and to ask before photographing worshippers. As everywhere in Armenia, hospitality is close to obligatory, and a conversation on the street can end with an invitation to coffee.

About 16,000 people live in Dilijan, making it one of the larger towns of Tavush Province but still a place where the centre can be crossed in ten minutes and faces are familiar. Housing runs from Soviet blocks and sanatorium buildings to older wooden-balconied houses and newer villas on the wooded slopes, and much of the population lives along the valley road or on the terraces above it.

Work comes from tourism, the hotels and guesthouses, the mineral water and food businesses, forestry and the national park, the schools — including the international boarding school, which is a significant local employer — and from small-scale farming and beekeeping. Many families also depend on money sent from relatives in Yerevan or Russia, and seasonal work in the capital is common. The town's population has fallen steadily since the late Soviet years and has not recovered.

The rhythm follows the season. In summer the town fills with visitors from Yerevan escaping the heat, the cafés put tables outside and minibuses run full; in winter it is quiet, snowbound, and the concerns are heating, roads over the pass and school transport. The condition of the forest, building on the slopes and the balance between development and the national park are the recurring local arguments.

Dilijan eats mountain food. Khorovats, meat grilled over vine or fruit wood, is the standard meal for guests, served with grilled vegetables, lavash and a pile of fresh herbs — tarragon, basil, coriander — that are treated as a dish in their own right rather than a garnish. Trout from Lake Sevan and from local fish farms appears on most menus, grilled whole or baked, and soups such as spas, made from matsun yoghurt and wheat, and bozbash, a mutton and vegetable broth, are common in cooler weather.

The forest supplies much of the rest. Honey from hives in the beech woods, jams made from cornelian cherry, rosehip, walnut and wild plum, mushrooms, and herbal teas dried from mountain plants are sold along the road and in the craft shops. Dairy is important: string cheese, home-made matsun and clotted cream eaten with honey at breakfast. Gata, a dense sweet pastry with a buttery flour filling, is the usual accompaniment to coffee, and dolma and ghapama appear at family feasts as they do across the country.

The town's name is attached above all to water. Mineral springs in the valley have been bottled since the Soviet period, and the local water is a point of pride and the subject of a well-known film joke. Otherwise the drinks are those of the whole country: Armenian brandy, vodka distilled from mulberries or cornelian cherries in the villages, and increasingly wine from Armenian vineyards.