Yerevan

Yerevan dates its founding to 782 BC, when the Urartian king Argishti I built the fortress of Erebuni on a hill above the Ararat plain and recorded the fact on a cuneiform stone that survives. The plain around it was settled continuously afterwards, but the town spent most of its history as a provincial place fought over by larger powers — Persian, Arab, Byzantine, Seljuk, Ottoman and Safavid — and repeatedly wrecked by earthquakes. Under Persian rule it was the seat of a khanate centred on a fortress above the Hrazdan, and its population was mixed Armenian and Muslim.

Russian forces took the city in 1827 and the region was ceded to the Russian Empire the following year. Yerevan remained small, a dusty district town of some 30,000 people, until it was made the capital of the short-lived independent republic in 1918 and then of Soviet Armenia. That, and the arrival of survivors of the 1915 genocide, transformed it. From 1924 the architect Alexander Tamanian rebuilt the town to a radial-concentric plan, sweeping away much of the old quarters and using the local volcanic tuff in pink, cream and black that gives the city its colour.

Soviet industry and in-migration pushed the population past a million by the 1980s. The 1988 earthquake in the north, the Karabakh conflict and the collapse of the Soviet Union brought years of blockade, cold and power cuts in the early 1990s. Since then the centre has been rebuilt and partly replaced, protests changed the government in 2018, and the city has absorbed successive waves of arrivals, including most recently people who left Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023.

Yerevan carries the weight of being the only large city of a nation whose diaspora outnumbers it. Institutions here are national by definition: the Matenadaran's manuscripts, the opera and its two halls, the History Museum, the conservatory, the film festival named after the apricot. Visitors from Los Angeles, Beirut, Paris and Moscow are a constant presence, and the varieties of Armenian spoken in the cafés are a subject of gentle comment.

The duduk, an apricot-wood reed pipe with a low mournful tone, is the national instrument and can be heard in concert halls and on the street. Composers from Komitas, who collected village songs and whose name is on the conservatory, to Aram Khachaturian are civic figures with statues and institutions attached. Chess is taught in schools and followed like a sport. The Armenian Apostolic Church orders the calendar, and even among the unobservant, church feasts such as Vardavar, when the whole city throws water, are kept without embarrassment.

Daily manners are formal at first and warm afterwards. Meals are long, toasts are structured and made by one person at a time, and refusing food outright is read as a rebuke. The genocide of 1915 and the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh are discussed openly among Armenians but are not casual conversation for a visitor. Evenings are spent outdoors from April to October, on café terraces, at the fountains of Republic Square and on the Cascade steps.

About 1.1 million people live in Yerevan, roughly a third of Armenia's population, and the share has grown as villages empty. Most live in Soviet-built apartment districts ringing the centre — Arabkir, Malatia-Sebastia, Nor Nork, Erebuni — while the tuff-fronted blocks of Kentron have become the expensive quarter, full of short-let flats, offices and restaurants, with new towers rising between them and old buildings lost to development.

The economy has shifted decisively towards services. Information technology is the growth sector, helped by large numbers of Russians who moved to the city from 2022, along with tourism, construction, education and the brandy, wine and food industries. Wages are low relative to prices in the centre, many households receive money from relatives abroad, and the arrival of more than a hundred thousand people from Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 added pressure on housing and schools.

The rhythm of the day starts early for work and finishes late for pleasure: shops open into the evening, and families walk the boulevards after dark in summer to escape flats that hold the heat. Marshrutka minibuses and taxis fill the streets, traffic and parking dominate local politics, and winter air pollution and the green space lost to building are the other recurring complaints. Lake Sevan and the gorges within an hour's drive absorb the city at weekends.

Yerevan eats the Armenian table at its fullest. Lavash, the thin bread baked against the wall of a clay tonir and listed by UNESCO, comes with everything and is used to wrap and to scoop. Khorovats, skewers of pork, lamb or vegetables grilled over vine cuttings, is the centrepiece of celebration and of any weekend gathering, served with grilled tomatoes, aubergine and peppers. Dolma means vine or cabbage leaves rolled around rice and minced meat, and the summer version stuffs tomatoes, peppers and aubergines instead.

Around these sit the herbs that Armenians eat by the handful, salty string cheese, thick matsun yoghurt, and soups: spas made from matsun and wheat, and khash, cow's feet simmered overnight and eaten early on winter mornings with garlic and dried lavash. Ghapama, a pumpkin baked with rice and dried fruit, appears at feasts. Lebanese and Syrian Armenians who settled here brought shawarma, lahmajoun and manti, now everyday food, and the city has a growing number of restaurants reworking village dishes.

Fruit is the pride of the place: apricots above all, then pomegranates, grapes, peaches and mulberries, sold fresh in summer and dried the rest of the year at the covered markets. Armenian brandy, aged in oak at the works above the gorge and usually called cognac locally, is the classic gift, while Areni wine from the south has revived enough to fill a street of bars near the opera house.