A Museum and a Mosque in a Half Day of Yerevan Tourism

The fountains putting on an enthusiastic display at the monument to Stalin's bud Stepan Shahumyan

Today was only a half of a day of tourism because work duty infiltrated the vacation. It happens sometimes. And if such a thing is going to happen, better in Yerevan than in Tbilisi or Baku!

The waters were turned on in the fountains of Yerevan, which made for a nice walk to the day's first destination.

Now, if it sounds like I am not totally enjoying Yerevan and Armenia, and that enjoyed the two prior stops on my Caucasian vacation much much much much much (should I insert another couple of much's?) more, you would be right. One reason for this is that Azerbaijan and Georgia were awesome. I was expecting to really love Tbilisi, Georgia, and it exceeded my expectations. I didn't know what to expect of Azerbaijan. I visited it because I was going to be in the neighborhood. And I was wow-ed beyond anything that I expected.

As a note, it is a "Caucasian" vacation when one is vacationing in the Caucasus region astride the invisible line dividing the continents of Europe and Asia -- which really are a single continent of Eurasia -- as evidenced by plate tectonics as all of Europe and Asian -- except for the Arabian peninsula and the subcontinent of India -- are part of one super-sized tectonic plate. As for Yerevan in particular, and Armenia in general, I am not regretting visiting here. Despite all my b- and m-ing, it's not a horrible place. It is beautiful. Case in point:

And another case in point:

Beautiful architecture in Yerevan and beautiful nature in the rest of the country. Armenia is well worth visiting provided one of the following is true: (1) you are of Armenian heritage and want to experience the old homeland; or, (2) you're going to be in the neighborhood anyway. For somebody like me in the second category, the five-day, five-night trip here is proving to be too much. I would have been much happier with two full days (three nights) of tourism: one for Yerevan, one for a day trip such as the one I took the day before. Even with all of my bellyaching about the friendliness and warmth of the local population )or lack thereof), I would be enjoying a grand time in Armenia if I had scheduled a short jaunt.

 

Somewhere in Yerevan I am sure there are tourists laughing, smiling, and generally having a wonderful time soaking in the whole experience of being in Armenia. If I figure out where that is, I'll let you know.

Statues of children drinking from a fountain from which you too can actually drink. And the water will taste like fresh cold water should taste: like nothing, really, other than refreshment. And those statuary children were just as friendly, just as concerned with making me feel welcome and taking care of my needs as every other resident of Yerevan has been.

Here is an actual child and not just a statuary child enjoying the fountain.

He did not inquire as to whether I was enjoying my Armenian holiday.

In all seriousness, I am not miserable here. I am not unhappy I came here. I'm actually enjoying trying to be somewhat creative with my complaining. Although I do wish I planned a shorter stay, I'm not soaking in misery being here. The locals' attitude is running off me like the water on the umbrella being held by the statuary children in that photo above.

This is a huge, imposing statue of Alexander Myasnikian.

He was a Bolshevik. He was the first communist leader of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic after Armenian sovereignty ended after a very brief interval following the fall of czar. He died mysteriously in a mysterious plane crash of a mysterious origins in 1925. This was about a year after the death of Lenin. It also was before Stalin had consolidated control over the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, so the mysterious death probably did not come on orders from Stalin.

That said, the fact that this monument to the first communist leader of Armenia is still standing (it was built in 1980 when the Soviet Union was still in effect) is evidence of the "complicated" relationship Armenia has with its communist past. A giant statue of Lenin was torn down, but statues of other communist leaders remain. The stated reason is this is what happened in the past and there's no point denying it. The less-stated reason is Armenia remains dependent on Russia to this day: for trade, for tourists, and for protection from common enemies.

Above is the building housing the day's first destination: the Yerevan History Museum.

The museum does not occupy all -- or even most -- of the building. The collection is quite small.

Outside is a stela with cuneiform writing. Just Armenia once again reminding everyone how far back its civilization goes.

Across the street is the headquarters building of the Prosperous Armenia Party.

I don't know if the Prosperous Armenia Party is left of right, globalist or isolationist, anti-Putin or pro-Putin stooges. Regardless of their political platform, I can appreciate that their headquarters is a cool-looking building.

Entering the museum:

That is a clock (made in Georgia) that was supposed to be installed in a place of prominence in Yerevan. The glass protective cover was broken during the installation, so the clockface was not sealed off. Apparently, according to the blurb next to this display, Yerevan's crows enjoyed resting on the clock's hands, causing repeated damage. So, rather than just buy a new protective glass cover off Amazon or -- this being so far back in the past as to be almost prehistoric -- the Sears catalog, they took the clock down and moved it indoors.

The more modern era is represented by bric-a-.brac. 

I was hoping to get some insight into the communist era here in Yerevan, especially since the displays in the national museum on that topic were closed for renovation. But it was not to be. But I did learn one thing at this museum. 

This is painting depicting a market scene from a few hundred years ago.

And this is what I did not realize. Yerevan once was a Middle Eastern city. Historically, Armenia had been tied to Persian and Anatolian Turkey. It only hooked up with Russia recently -- in terms of the great length of Armenian history -- and Armenians love to remind you of how long this great length of Armenian history actually is -- with Armenia being tied to Russia only for the last 200 years. But before that? Armenian culture was Turkish and it was Persian.

Apparently they recently played a WBNA game here in the Yerevan museum.

This had been thrown out onto the floor.

There also was a section devoted to local art. This one definitely had that communist-era socialist realism feel to it.

The next stop for the day was a visit to the Blue Mosque. Across from it was this cool-looking building. Very Middle Eastern in design, which fit the neighborhood vibe.

I believe it is a shopping center of some sort.

This is the entrance to the Blue Mosque.

Note that it is blue. So why is there a mosque in the middle of Yerevan, which is in Armenia, which is the first country in the universe to adopt Christianity as its official state religion, which it did right around the year 300 A.D.?

Yerevan has been a crossroads and has historically been tied to Islamic Anatolian Turkey and Islamic Persia.

The Mosque had fallen into disrepair during the Soviet period as the communists treated Islamic with the same respect accorded other religions. Which is: none. No respect. Just systematic destruction and elimination of any gods other than Marx, Lenin and (until Khrushchev) Stalin.

But it recently has been repaired and extensively renovated, with financial assistance from Armenia's close ally.

Iran.

Note the minaret behind the building. Armenia takes its friends wherever it can find them and, right now, the Islamic Republic of Iran is at the top of its friend's list ever since its former #1 friend Russia decided to be neutral in Armenia's recent war against Azerbaijan. 

The Blue Mosque is interesting, but it's worth visiting only to snap a few pictures.

It cannot compete with the splendor of all the old Armenian Apostolic cathedrals, churches, and monasteries.

As the afternoon was ending, I decided to look for a bakery for a snack. I had eaten delicious baked goods in my other destinations on this Caucasian vacation.

I couldn't find the specific bakery I was looking, but I did find this statue: the Vardan Mamikonyan Statue near the Vernissage Market. Who is Vardan Mamikonyan? An Armenian military leader who led a campaign against -- continuing with the theme of the Blue Mosque -- against the Persians in 451 A.D. In defense of the Armenians here, when they talk about how long back into the past Armenian history stretches back, it really does go a long way back. They are not exaggerating.

Let's have a closer look:

Let the Persians among you recoil in fear.

Soviet Brutalist Architecture That Works: Yerevan's The Cascades

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting: The Cascades

Yerevan's The Cascades, which is where the bus-van tour began, is a masterpiece of Soviet-style Brutalist architecture. What is, or what are -- depending on whether "The Cascades" is one thing or several things -- Yerevan's The Cascades. It is an absolutely massive staircase connecting the residential neighborhoods above the city to the central downtown core. Now, in the post-Soviet era, the massive staircase has been transformed, reconfigured, or decorated -- choose your verb -- with the addition of museum's worth of public art.

It starts with the Alexander Tamanian Statue at the "gateway" to The Cascades.

But there is more art, of varying quality, on display past Mr. Tamanian when you are walking toward the massive staircase.

For me, the star attraction of the art display are the three large (and fat) statues by Colombian artist Fernando Botero. While Mr. Botero himself was somewhat trim (he passed away in 2023), he is known for depicting very rotund figures whether in sculpture, drawing, or painting. Fat people. Fat cats. Fat fruits and vegetables. Even his rendering of Jesus on the Cross shows a rotund Jesus.

I would not have expected to find Boteros in Yerevan, especially since the fat fullness of the statuary contrasts with the deprivation of the Soviet Era when The Cascades were built, but sometimes we find things where we least expect them to be.

Like I never expected to see this.

The bird may be fat, but I don't believe he (or she) (I was not told the preferred pronouns) is a Botero. But definitely in line with the Botero theme.

Time to ascend.

Fortunately, one does not have to walk the stairs of the giant staircase (at least not until the last flight of stairs to reach the summit). There is an escalator inside.

At each "floor" -- or landing if you want to use staircase terminology, there is a lookout area where you can walk out and check your progress on the ascent. Fountains at the first such "landing":

And artistic renderings of trees, I presume.

Perspective:

That will give you a sense the amount of territory covered by each interval in the ascent, from landing to landing.

Finally, at the top of where you ascent by escalator is this fountain.

The swimmer/diver motif works well for a fountain high above the rest of the city.

At this point, if you want to reach the summit, you have to climb stairs. No more escalator.

Is this at the summit worth the climb?

Well, if you only had to walk up one flight of stairs and not the whole massive staircase, then I would say "yes." The pillar does betray the Soviet origins of this massive example of the Brutalist school of architecture.

My legs were wearing out after the long day of bus-van touring, so it was time to descend. On the descent, I noticed this:

That is actually one massive sneaker. It's not just that somebody lost a shoe on the climb. I'm estimating three or four feet in length. Just another example of the apparent Armenian shoe fetish about which I learned on this trip.

And here is an elephant trunk emerging from a small hut:

The elephant looks like it is sporting a happy expression. Obviously the elephant is not bothered by the claustrophobia.

Dusk is settling in.

Time to get back to the hotel for the evening.

Unless you want to play in a fountain. They're functioning again all over the city after taking Tuesday off.

Four-stop Tour of Armenia Outside Yerevan, Featuring Mount Ararat

The Temple of Mithras in Garni.

Today was the day for a bilingual tour of Armenia outside Yerevan. Bilingual? Armenian and English? No. English and Russian. Russia is the #1 source of Armenian tourists. The rest of the tourists generally speak the international language of tourism: English.

This was not a tour with a hotel pick-up. This was a tour with one central meeting place, which was the Cascade Complex, a one-mile walk from my hotel. So I hoofed it, since the price was right.

I walked past the Alexander Spendiarian Statue en route. If you look at this photo, you will see the Mother of Armenia statue off in the distance, at the top right of the photo. I did not visit her, There's no cable car up to her like there is the Mother of Georgia.

The meeting point was in front of the Alexander Tamanian Statue in front of the Cascade Complex.

That is him. Well, his statue at least. And soon 20-ish tourists packed into a large van heading off to our first destination of the day: Khor Virap.

Let's go in.

Khor Virap is an historic monastery, built in 642 A.D., over the site of a prison (where St. Gregory was cast into the "deep pit"). You can go down into the pit, but people were a whole lot smaller back then which means the space is tiny and claustrophic and, making matters worse, packed with tourists.

This is the monastery building:

Inside:

The big draw at Khor Virap, and I mean that literally because the draw in very big, is that it is a great viewpoint Mount Ararat.

Mount Ararat is the national symbol of Armenia. It is what was once Armenian territory, but after a land swap made the Bolsheviks, it is in territory traded to Modern day Turkey (which I know all the cool kids Turkiye with random umlauts over random vowels which ordinarily is the sort of spelling thing I love) (but I am not one of the cool kids, linguistically or any other way).

Mount Ararat also is reputed to be where Noah's Ark hit dry land when the Biblical rains came to an end. (I am not calling it a "flood myth" because the flood was 100 percent real. Every culture talks about it a massive flood inundating the earth because there was a massive flooding of the temperate 

zones of the planet after the ice sheets melted at the end of the Last Ice Age. So the flood is no myth.)

Ararat more artsily framed.

The mountain is absolutely massive and dominates the landscape. If Noah's Ark did actually float around in the neighborhood of Mount Ararat, then it is no surprise that the Ark ran aground here because the odds are great that it would strike something this massive.

And with Ararat being so prominent here, this is a rendering of the dove that Noah sent that returned with the olive branch evidencing dry land ahead.

And like every good place with a view, you climb to the viewpoint:

Cross along the way:

And here's a view of the monastery from the viewpoint:

One last look at Mount Ararat before heading to the next destination:

And the next destination was Garni. Let's go in and see what we're supposed to see.

The stop in Garni was to visit the Temple of Mithras.

It was crawling with tourists.

And this is the reconstructed, rebuilt Temple of Mithras.

This is the only surviving pagan temple in Armenia. The rest were all destroyed.

It is an active archaeological site.

Note the mosaic floor in what I believe is considered to have been the bathhouse area.

All Roman temples had bathhouses. So you could be clean when you went to temple.

The temple grounds not only are an active archaeological site. It is an active instagramming site:

Although some influencers do not know to pose to get the actual temple in the background. Case in point:

These are the remnants of a large church was built adjacent to (and taller than) the pagan Temple of Mithras/

The church was destroyed in a massive earthquake a few centuries ago.

But the pagan temple still stands, although it too required rebuilding work after that earthquake.

But clearly there is more of the temple than the newer church.

Nearby was the third stop of the day.

The Symphony of Stone. It is not named because the wind threw the canyon makes beautiful music. It gets its name because the lava rock cooled in such a way as the the rock resembles church organ pipes.

It's not a far walk into the canyon to check out the rocks.

Two pleasant surprises about the walk. The tour guide said that if we did not want to walk the uphill walk out of the canyon, there was a bus we could take that cost 500 Armenian dram, which is a little more than a buck in U.S. dollars. Bus? Eh. But it wasn't a bus. No.

It was a tourist train! And what sort of tourist does not love a tourist train?

The other "surprise" was that, at the end of the canyon walk, you could see the just-visited Temple of Mithras high atop the hill across the way.

Should I zoom in for a closer look?

Time to pay my 500 drams and take that train.

I actually talked a few of the others on this tour to get on board. They enjoyed the ride as much as I did. Which was a lot.

Time for lunch.

We saw Armenian "lavash" bread being made, which looked like a giant tortilla, in my opinion.

After eating, it was time for the fourth destination of the day: Geghard.

Geghard is a church that is partially in a cave. It was built to house probably the most important relic in the possession of the Armenian Apostolic Church: the spear that the Roman soldier used to pierce the side of Christ when Christ was hanging on the Cross.

The spear is no longer located at this church. It now is better protected at the Etchmiadzin Monastery in Vagharshapat, Armenia. Which was not on the day's itinerary. 

Let's go into the cave part first:

It was dark.

At one point, there was a hole where you could look down and see the church part of Geghard,

We did not have to shimmy through that hole to get to the church. This was not like visiting the "deep pit" into which St. Gregory had been thrown. We walked.

Church art depicting the Baptism of Christ:

Lots of candles being lit.

And not because it was dark in there, you cynic,

Decoration:

Crosses on the hill across the way:

Geghard is still under refurbishment.

As was the road leading to it from Garni.

The fifth and final stop of the four-stop tour was a brief visit to Charent's Arch, was is known for being a great viewpoint for Mount Ararat.

The view was so spectacular they built an arch and named it for a poet.

But, alas, by late in the afternoon things had gotten hazy and Ararat was barely visible.

Good thing I got my Ararat photos in at Khor Virap early in the day.