Yerevan in three days

It is also a city that most visitors give a day and a half to before heading south, and a fair number of them tell us afterwards that they should have given it three.

The way to plan Yerevan is around its clock rather than its map, which is what this is.

First, the clock

Yerevan runs late, and this is not a stereotype, it is a scheduling fact. Cafes and museums open around ten or eleven. Lunch is at two. Dinner is at nine or ten. The squares, the Cascade and the fountains at Republic Square are at their busiest well after dark, and in summer the streets are alive past midnight.

If you leave your hotel at eight you will find a closed city and lose an hour of temper. We build Yerevan days from about ten thirty, with long lunches and long evenings, and we schedule early starts only where they buy something.

The one thing worth getting up for is Khor Virap, forty-five minutes south, because Mount Ararat at 16,854 feet (5,137 m) clouds over by mid morning in summer, and the mountain is the reason to go.

The second fact: summer afternoons are hot. Yerevan regularly passes 100°F (38°C) in July and August. The city has trees, fountains and shade and copes better than it should, and walking between one and five still does not work. Armenia month by month sets out the year.

Day one: the centre, on foot

Late morning, Republic Square and the Cascade. Start at Republic Square, which is the plan of the city in one place: pink and cream tufa, the National Gallery and History Museum on one side, and the whole thing designed as a single composition in the 1920s and 1930s. Then walk up Abovyan or Northern Avenue to the Opera and on to the Cascade.

The Cascade is an enormous limestone stairway climbing the hillside, with escalators inside it and the Cafesjian sculpture collection on the terraces, including a good deal of Botero. Ride up, walk down, or the reverse. The view from the top over the city to Ararat on a clear day is the single best thing to look at in Yerevan.

Afternoon, the Matenadaran. Fifteen minutes up the hill from the Cascade, and this is the reason to give Yerevan three days. The Matenadaran holds one of the world’s great collections of medieval manuscripts, around seventeen thousand of them, in a building that takes itself seriously. The exhibition is a fraction of the holdings and is beautifully done. Two hours, and take the guided version rather than reading the labels.

Late afternoon, the GUM market. The covered market for dried fruit, sujukh, cheese, spices and pickles, with generous tasting and cheerful pressure to buy. This is where you buy things to take home rather than at the airport.

Evening. Dinner late, in the centre, at one of the old-style places where the tolma is the reason to go. What to eat in Armenia covers the ordering.

Day two: the hard morning, and the easy afternoon

Morning, Tsitsernakaberd. The genocide memorial and museum on the hill above the Hrazdan gorge. The memorial is a split stone spire and a circle of leaning slabs around an eternal flame, and the museum below it is thorough and very hard.

This is not optional for understanding the country you are travelling in, and it is heavy. We schedule it in the morning with a deliberately easy afternoon behind it, never before a long drive and never on a departure day. That is trip design rather than delicacy.

Lunch, long and somewhere green. The Hrazdan gorge below, or back into the centre and a two-hour lunch. This is a day to eat slowly.

Afternoon, Echmiadzin and Zvartnots. Half an hour west. Vagharshapat, usually called Echmiadzin, is the Mother See of the Armenian Apostolic Church and its cathedral is one of the oldest in the world. The treasury holds relics that matter enormously to Armenians and the guide’s explanation is the whole value of the visit.

Zvartnots, on the way back, is a seventh-century circular cathedral that collapsed a thousand years ago and is more interesting as a ruin than most standing churches are intact. Late afternoon light there is worth timing for.

Evening, the fountains. The dancing fountains at Republic Square run on summer evenings and half the city turns out for them. Then dinner at ten, which by now will feel normal.

Day three: Garni, Geghard and the gorge

Late morning, Garni. Forty minutes east. A first-century Hellenistic temple on a promontory above the Azat gorge, the only one of its kind left standing in the region, rebuilt in the 1970s from its own fallen stones after an earthquake. Below it, reached on foot or by a short vehicle track, is the Symphony of Stones, a wall of hexagonal basalt columns hanging over the river.

Midday, Geghard. Fifteen minutes further up the gorge. A monastery partly cut into the rock face, on the UNESCO list, with chambers carved directly out of the cliff.

The important part: ask your guide to arrange the singing in the rock-cut chamber. The acoustics there are the reason to be at Geghard and the arrangement has to be made in advance rather than on the spot. Without it you have seen a fine building. With it you have had one of the two or three best moments of an Armenian trip.

Buy gata at the car park on the way out. It is baked in front of you.

Afternoon, back in the city, and free. The Vernissage open-air market if it is a weekend, for craft, carpets, silver and Soviet junk. Or the Blue Mosque, an eighteenth-century survival on Mashtots Avenue that is quiet and green. Or the History Museum on Republic Square, which is better than its exterior suggests and holds the Bronze Age material.

Evening, the best dinner of the three. Yerevan’s modern Armenian kitchens have become genuinely serious in the last decade. Book this one, and book it for nine.

Where to stay, by district

We would put a first-time visitor in Kentron near the Opera almost every time. Our boutique route uses the small number of Yerevan buildings that genuinely earn their rate.

Eating and drinking, in one place

• An old-style Armenian restaurant on the first night, for tolma, khorovats and the aubergine salad.
• A wine bar on the first or second evening, where the Vayots Dzor producers are poured by the glass. Areni Noir is light, high-acid and savoury and it surprises people.
• A modern Armenian kitchen for one dinner, booked.
• The GUM market in the morning for dried fruit, sujukh and cheese.
• Lavash, watched being baked on the wall of a tonir, once, wherever you get the chance.
• Coffee, everywhere, all day, which is the actual daily rhythm of the city.

What we would skip in Yerevan

The big brandy factory tour. It is the most heavily marketed activity in the city, and it is an hour of process and a small pour. Armenian brandy is genuinely good, and you can taste better versions of it in a bar in twenty minutes. On a three-day city stay there are better afternoons. More of these judgements are in what we would skip in Armenia.

Restaurants with folk shows. They exist for coach groups. Buffet food and a performance rather than something that was happening anyway.

Trying to do Khor Virap, Echmiadzin and Garni in one day. It is physically possible and it produces a day in a car. Two of them at most, and Khor Virap belongs to a morning of its own.

Getting around

The centre is walkable and that is how to see it. The metro is one line, cheap and useful for the Cascade to Republic Square axis. Taxis booked through an app are inexpensive and are how everyone moves at night.

If you are on a wider Armenia trip, your driver covers the day trips and the airport. Inside the centre a car is a liability rather than a help.

Plan this trip

Tell us how many days you have in Armenia and we will build the Yerevan part around the way the city actually runs, with the right district, the right evenings and the singing at Geghard arranged. Free first outline, no obligation.

Start planning

Keep reading

• Armenia: the complete guide to planning your trip
• What to eat in Armenia, and the Areni revival
• Armenia for the first time
• What we would skip in Armenia
• Classic Armenia in 8 days
• All our Armenia trips

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