Where to Stay in Gyumri, Shirak

What is Gyumri known for?

Its galleries and house-museums are the draw. The Gallery of Aslamazyan sisters, the Hovhannes Shiraz home-museum and the Mher Mkrtchyan Museum keep the memory of the painters, poets and actors the city produced, while the Dzitoghtsyan Museum of National Architecture preserves its distinctive black-and-red stone building tradition. Statues carry the same spirit into the streets, from the Charles Aznavour Statue to the Statue of Avetik Isahakyan.

The 1988 Spitak earthquake left marks that a visitor still reads across the fabric of the place.

What are the main landmarks in Gyumri?

The churches anchor the skyline. Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God, the Church of the Holy Saviour and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross rise in black and red stone, with Surb Nshan Church and Saint Gregory the Illuminator Church among the older houses of worship. Art fills the museums.

Inside the Gallery of Aslamazyan sisters, the Hovhannes Shiraz home-museum, the Mher Mkrtchyan Museum and the Sergey Merkurov House-Museum the city keeps its painters, poets and actors. Statues mark the streets. Mother Armenia, the Charles Aznavour Statue and the Earthquake memorial each speak for a different chapter of Gyumri.

What is the history of Gyumri?

Gyumri's modern story turns on two names and one catastrophe. Under the name Alexandropol, by the end of the 19th century the city had become the largest in Russian-ruled Eastern Armenia, its population then set above that of Yerevan. It served as a major centre of Russian troops during the Russo-Turkish wars of that century, and a Russian military base has kept a presence in part of the city ever since.

The cultural life ran alongside the garrison. The city won a wide name as a hub of painters, poets and actors, a reputation the Gallery of Aslamazyan sisters, the Hovhannes Shiraz home-museum and the Sergey Merkurov House-Museum still carry. Then came the 1988 Spitak earthquake.

It struck the city hard, and its consequences remain visible across the streets, so that the Earthquake memorial now stands among the older churches and statues as the newest layer of a long record. The administrative centre of Shirak Province wears every one of these chapters at once, from the black-tuff churches of the old town to the memorials that mark the harder years of the northwest.

Where is Gyumri?

Gyumri stands in the northwest of Armenia, the administrative centre of Shirak Province on the high plain that gives the region its open, windswept character. The setting is elevated and broad. The city's builders worked the local black and red tuff into the churches and mansions that the Dzitoghtsyan Museum of National Architecture now preserves, a stone that ties the streets to the ground they rise from.

Yerevan lies to the south of this upland corner of the country.

What is the climate of Gyumri?

The high plain sets the weather. Sitting on the elevated ground of Shirak Province, Gyumri runs to cold, long winters and short, warmer summers, and the wind that crosses the open upland can sharpen either season well beyond what the calendar alone would promise. Snow settles readily here.

The black-tuff streets around the Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God carry that mountain cold through much of the year.

How do you get to Gyumri?

As the second-largest city in Armenia and the seat of Shirak Province, Gyumri sits on the main routes across the country's northwest. Approaches climb to the plain. The road and rail links run down toward Yerevan in the south, and the city's own centre gathers around the churches and the Charles Aznavour Statue once you arrive.

The Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God marks the heart of the old town.