Three days in Gyumri: the city an earthquake broke and the jokes kept going
Two nights in Armenia's second city: black tuff streets built for a Russian garrison town, the best craft workshops in the country, a monastery in a river gorge, and a ruined capital just across a closed border.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Gyumri
- Places
- 7 across 3 days
Gyumri has had four names in two hundred years. It was Kumayri, then Alexandropol when the Russians made it their garrison against the Ottomans and named it for the Tsar's wife, then Leninakan, and since 1992 Gyumri again. What the Russian century left is a genuine nineteenth century town: two and three storey houses of black volcanic tuff with pink and orange dressings, carved doorways, iron balconies, a huge square and a grid of streets that survive almost intact.
On the morning of 7 December 1988 an earthquake centred on Spitak, forty kilometres east, killed tens of thousands of people across northern Armenia and flattened much of this city. Locals say it levelled Leninakan and left Alexandropol standing, which is close to literally true: the Soviet apartment blocks pancaked while the old black stone houses mostly held. Nearly forty years on the rebuilding is still going, and there are gaps and cranes and temporary housing among the restored streets.
None of which has dented the place. Gyumri is where Armenians go for the humour, the dialect, the craftsmen and the food, and it is where the country's artists have come from for a century. Two nights is enough, and it is a very different city from Yerevan.
Highlights
- The black tuff streets of old Alexandropol, largely as the Russian empire built them
- Six hundred works by the Aslamazyan sisters, the first women to make it in Soviet Armenian art
- A working forge in a city that once counted 247 blacksmiths in a single guild list
- Marmashen, a red stone monastery of about 1030 in the Akhurian gorge
- The Black Fortress on its hill, thrown up against the Ottomans in the 1830s
Where to stay
Gyumri, two nights
The centre is the enormous main square, with the cathedral, the town hall and a second church on it, and the old Kumayri quarter of black stone streets running off to the west and south. The Black Fortress stands on a hill on the southern edge; everything else of interest is within twenty minutes on foot of the square.
Stay in one of the restored old houses in the Kumayri quarter. They cost a fraction of Yerevan and put you inside the thing you came to look at.
Gyumri cooking is heavier and more Anatolian than in the capital: chanakh, a beef stew baked in a clay pot, pokhind made from roasted wheat, and the ponchik, a fried dough ball filled with warm cream, which the city treats as a civic institution.
Day by day
Day 1 in Gyumri
The square, the black streets, and two sisters who painted the century
Start on the main square, which is far too big for the city and all the better for it. Two churches face each other across it: the Holy Saviour, wrecked in 1988 and rebuilt since, with its collapsed dome left on the ground beside it as a memorial, and the Seven Wounds church opposite. The government building, the fountains and the cafes fill the rest.
Then walk into the Kumayri quarter behind it and let the streets do the rest. This is the largest surviving nineteenth century townscape in Armenia: black tuff walls with pink and cream carved surrounds, arched gateways into courtyards, workshops at street level, and hundreds of protected buildings inside a few streets.
In the afternoon go to the gallery of Mariam and Yeranuhi Aslamazyan, two sisters from a village near here who became the first prominent women in Soviet Armenian art and who travelled, unusually, across Asia and Africa on official trips. The collection runs to some six hundred paintings, ceramics and prints, hung in a restored merchant's house, and the colour in it is startling after a day of black stone.
- 15:00
Town Square
VisitThe main square with its two churches, the ruined dome of 1988 laid out as a memorial, and the old quarter running off behind it. An hour, plus as long again for the streets.
- 17:30
Gallery of Mariam and Eranuhi Aslamazyan Sisters
VisitSix hundred of the sisters' works, filling a restored house a minute off the square. An hour and a half, and there is a ceramics workshop attached if you book ahead.
- 19:30
Dinner in the old quarter
EatAsk for chanakh in a clay pot, and the trout if it is on. Portions are Gyumri-sized, which means order less than you would in Yerevan.
With more time: The Russian church on the edge of the old quarter is unlike anything else in Armenia, built for the garrison in a style that belongs several thousand kilometres north. Worth ten minutes if you pass it.
Day 2 in Gyumri
A merchant's house, a forge, and the fortress on the hill
The museum of national architecture and urban life is the one museum to make time for. It occupies a wealthy merchant's house of the 1870s and keeps it as it was: the family rooms, the courtyard, the furniture, the photographs and the tools of a provincial imperial town at its richest. There is a dining room downstairs where they will cook you a proper Gyumri lunch if you order it a day in advance, which is worth doing.
Then the forge. Blacksmithing was the trade this city ran on, and a nineteenth century guild list counted 247 smiths working here at once. One family workshop still operates and takes visitors, six generations in, and you can watch the work and try the hammer. Book it through the visitors bureau; it is not a place you drop into.
Finish at the Black Fortress on the hill, a round drum of black basalt the Russians built in the 1830s after they had taken this frontier off the Ottomans, and which has since been restored and turned over to concerts and events. The reason to climb up is the view: the whole city below, the plateau running west, and the Mother Armenia statue on the ridge beside it.
- 09:30
Museum of National Architecture and Urban Life
VisitA rich family's home from the imperial years kept whole, rooms, courtyard, furniture and photographs. Ninety minutes, and order lunch a day ahead if you want it.
- 13:00
Visit the studio of an award-winning blacksmith in Yerankyuni restaurant
VisitA sixth-generation blacksmith's workshop, still working, with a demonstration and a go at the anvil. An hour, and it needs booking in advance.
- 16:00
Black Fortress
HistoricThe round black fortress of the 1830s on the hill above the city, restored and used for events, with Mother Armenia on the ridge alongside. An hour, and take a taxi up.
With more time: The city has more craft workshops open to visitors than anywhere else in the country: pottery, traditional costume and calligraphy, doll making and home cooking classes among them. The visitors bureau keeps the list, and one of them makes a better afternoon than a second museum.
Day 3 in Gyumri
Marmashen, in the gorge on the Turkish border
Marmashen is nine kilometres northwest, down in the valley of the Akhurian, and it is the best thing in the province. Three churches of red and grey tufa stand together on a terrace above the river, the largest of them finished around 1030 for Prince Vahram Pahlavuni, with the foundations of a fourth and a round church laid out in the grass beside them. Part of it fell and was pieced back together by a joint Italian and Soviet team, and the orchards and the river make it a place Armenians come to sit rather than to tick off.
The other thing to know is what is on the far bank. The Akhurian is the border, and some forty kilometres downriver stands Ani, the ruined medieval Armenian capital with its cathedral and walls, on the Turkish side of a frontier that has been closed since 1993. From high ground near the river you can sometimes see it. Armenians cannot go there; foreigners have to fly to Turkey and drive from Kars.
Back in town, buy ponchik for the road before the marshrutka.
- 09:30
Marmashen Monastery
ReligiousThree red tufa churches of around 1030 on a terrace above the Akhurian river, nine kilometres out of town. Two hours including the taxi, and the site is free and open.
- 12:30
Russian Church
VisitThe garrison church on the way back into town, in a Russian style that belongs nowhere near the Caucasus. Fifteen minutes.
With more time: If you have a car and half a day, the Shirak plateau north of the city has more: the monastery at Harich out towards Artik, and the reservoir on the Akhurian where the border runs down the middle of the water.
Before you go
Getting here
Marshrutkas and shared taxis for Gyumri leave Yerevan from beside Sasuntsi David metro station whenever they fill, between about eight in the morning and eight at night, and take two to two and a half hours for around fifteen hundred dram. The shared taxis cost a little more and are considerably more comfortable. A private taxi is ten to twelve thousand dram for the car.
There is also a slow daily train from Yerevan, which is cheap, half empty and a nicer way to cross the plateau if the timings suit. From Tbilisi, a marshrutka leaves Ortachala terminal in the morning and takes four to five hours over the Bavra border. Gyumri's own airport takes budget flights from Germany, Greece and Russia and is often the cheapest way into the country.
Getting around
The historic centre is compact and walking is the point. Beyond it the city sprawls, and the fortress, the monastery and one or two of the workshops need a taxi. Taxis are cheap and easiest ordered through an app; drivers rarely speak English.
The visitors bureau on the main square is unusually good for a town this size and will book workshops, guides and drivers, which for the craft studios is close to essential since most want a day's notice.
One thing to expect
Russia keeps a military base in Gyumri and soldiers in uniform are a normal sight in the streets and cafes. It is not a tense place and nobody will bother you, but do not photograph the base or its gates.
Gyumri repays the slow version: an afternoon in the black streets, a day of house museums and workshops, a morning down at the river.
It is also the most sensible overnight between Yerevan and Georgia, whether you are going north to Tbilisi over the Bavra crossing or east towards Dilijan and the Debed.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Gyumri worth visiting?
- Yes, and it is the best counterweight to Yerevan in the country. It is the one Armenian city with a whole nineteenth century centre still standing, it has the craftspeople and the galleries, and it is cheap. Two nights is the right length.
- How do you get from Yerevan to Gyumri?
- Marshrutkas and shared taxis from beside Sasuntsi David metro station, leaving when full through the day, two to two and a half hours, around fifteen hundred dram. The last one back leaves Gyumri around seven in the evening, so do not plan a late return.
- Can you see Ani from Armenia?
- From certain points along the Akhurian gorge, in clear weather, yes, at a distance. You cannot visit it from Armenia: the border with Turkey is closed, and the only access is from Kars on the Turkish side.
- Is the earthquake damage still visible?
- Yes. Some restored streets are immaculate and other blocks are still gapped, propped or waiting. The Amenaprkich church on the main square keeps its collapsed dome on the ground as a memorial, which is the clearest single reminder of what 1988 did here.
- Gyumri or Dilijan?
- Different trips. Gyumri is architecture, craft and city life on a bare plateau; Dilijan is forest, monasteries and walking. If you have four spare days in Armenia, do both, with a night in each and Vanadzor between them.