Yerevan, Armenia — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Yerevan known for?

Yerevan is known as the seat of Armenia's capital, one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities. The region centres on the city on the Hrazdan River, set in the Ararat Plain and standing as one of the three hubs of the South Caucasus. It has held the capital since 1918.

Old beyond most reckoning, it carries the administrative and cultural weight of the whole country.

Where is Yerevan?

Yerevan's capital region sits in the Ararat Plain, in the heart of Armenia. The Hrazdan River runs through it. The region is coterminous with the capital, a compact administrative unit built around the city on the plain, where the flat, fertile ground of the Ararat Plain gives way at its edges to the highlands that ring the Armenian capital.

Low ground, high country beyond. Yerevan lies in or around the Ararat Plain, the seventh Armenian capital to stand on or near it. The Hrazdan River threads the city and the plain around it.

Around the region rise the mountains of the South Caucasus, framing the capital on its lowland floor. This is the administrative and industrial centre of Armenia. Compact and central, the region is given over wholly to the capital and its plain.

The plain and the river set its ground.

What is Yerevan like?

The culture of the Yerevan region is the culture of Armenia's capital, gathered into one city. Yerevan stands as the administrative and cultural centre of the country, an old city on the Hrazdan River whose life runs back further than almost any other still lived in. The church sits at its core.

Yerevan is the seat of the Araratian Pontifical Diocese, the largest diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church and one of the oldest dioceses anywhere in the world. That ancient faith shapes the region's character as much as its long occupation of the Ararat Plain. As Armenia's primate city, Yerevan draws the country's institutions, its arts and its worship into one place.

The capital carries the weight of the nation. Within the South Caucasus, the region holds the fullest expression of Armenian life, bound to the church, the river and the plain. Old faith, old ground.

What is the history of Yerevan?

Yerevan counts among the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, its story reaching back across millennia on the Ararat Plain. It became the capital of Armenia in 1918, the fourteenth capital in the country's long history and the seventh to stand in or around the Ararat Plain. Older layers lie beneath the modern city on the Hrazdan River.

Through every age, the plain has held a capital. That role fell to Yerevan.

What is the climate of Yerevan?

The Yerevan region shares the temperate, continental climate of the Ararat Plain. Summers run hot and dry on the low, open plain, while winters turn cold under the surrounding highlands. Its lowland setting makes it warmer than the mountains that ring it, yet the seasons still swing hard between heat and frost.

The plain sets the weather.

How do you get to Yerevan?

Yerevan is where nearly every visitor to Armenia arrives, the capital and the country's main point of entry. As one of the three hubs of the South Caucasus, the region draws arrivals by air and by road from across the country and beyond. Most come straight to the capital.

From the city on the Hrazdan River, the rest of Armenia lies within easy reach across the Ararat Plain.