The roots of the Armenian people go deep into the mountainous highlands around Lake Van, Lake Sevan and Lake Urmia, centred on the imposing mass of Mount Ararat. Between the 9th and 6th centuries BC the kingdom of Urartu flourished there, a powerful Iron Age civilisation and rival of Assyria, with its capital at Tushpa, on the shores of Lake Van. The Urartians were great builders of cyclopean fortresses, irrigation canals and temples, and they mastered bronze and iron metalwork; they are considered the direct predecessors of the Armenians in this land.
One of the most famous facts in Armenian history dates from that era: in 782 BC the Urartian king Argishti I founded the fortress of Erebuni on a hill overlooking the Araxes river valley. That citadel is the origin of present-day Yerevan, the capital, which makes it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, older than Rome. Even today the people of Yerevan celebrate their city's age on the basis of that cuneiform inscription.
After the decline of Urartu, around the 6th century BC, the Armenians proper emerged, an Indo-European people whose language forms an independent branch within that family. Under the Achaemenid Persian Empire the territory was a satrapy, and from then on the name Armenia began to appear in ancient sources, including the inscriptions of Darius I and the accounts of Greek historians.
After Alexander the Great passed through and his empire broke apart, Armenia gradually gained autonomy under local dynasties. Full independence came with the Artaxiad dynasty, founded by Artaxias I around 189 BC, which unified the territory and strengthened a distinctly Armenian identity. But it was his descendant Tigranes II, known as Tigranes the Great, who took the kingdom to its greatest historical extent.
Tigranes reigned from 95 to 55 BC and, taking advantage of the power vacuum left by the decline of the Seleucids and Rome's wars with Pontus, built within a few years the largest empire Armenia has ever had. At its peak it stretched from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, covering lands in present-day Armenia, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, and Tigranes took the ancient Persian title of 'king of kings'. For his court he founded a new capital, Tigranakert.
That empire was as meteoric as it was fragile: the clash with an expanding Rome, first under Lucullus and then under Pompey, ended up reducing Armenia to a client kingdom and a buffer state between Rome and the Parthian Empire. For centuries, that position between two giants would shape Armenia's destiny. The Armenian Arsacid dynasty, a branch of the Parthians, ruled from the 1st century AD and would be at the centre of the event that changed the country's identity forever.
The most momentous and defining event in Armenian history took place in the year 301: under King Tiridates III (Trdat III), of the Arsacid dynasty, Armenia became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion, more than a decade before the Roman emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan. The architect of that conversion was Gregory the Illuminator, Saint Gregory, the first head of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Tradition tells a powerful story. Gregory, son of a Parthian nobleman, preached Christianity at court, and the pagan king Tiridates, enraged, had him tortured and thrown into a deep pit in the fortress of Khor Virap, where he remained imprisoned for around thirteen years, surviving thanks to a pious woman who brought him bread. When the king fell into madness, the monarch's sister had Gregory freed; Gregory healed the king and converted him, and with him the whole kingdom. Ever since, Khor Virap, with Ararat in the background, has been one of the most sacred places in Armenia.
The new faith put down very deep roots. In Vagharshapat, the capital at the time, the cathedral of Etchmiadzin was built; it is considered one of the oldest in the world and is the spiritual seat of the Catholicos, the highest authority of the Armenian Church. In 451, when the Sasanian Persian Empire tried to impose Zoroastrianism, the Armenians rose up at the battle of Avarayr, led by Vardan Mamikonian; although they were defeated militarily, their resistance forced Persia to respect the Christian faith and became engraved as a founding myth of national identity.
Once converted to Christianity, Armenia faced a problem: the Scriptures and the liturgy were in Greek and Syriac, languages foreign to the people. To solve it, the monk, theologian and linguist Mesrop Mashtots took on a monumental task. Around the year 405 he created the Armenian alphabet, a system of 36 letters (later expanded to 38) designed precisely to capture every sound of the Armenian language. That same alphabet, with minimal changes, is still used today, sixteen hundred years later.
The invention of the alphabet sparked a true golden age. According to tradition, the first sentence written in Armenian was a quotation from Proverbs; soon afterwards the whole Bible was translated, in a version so beautiful it was called 'the queen of translations', and historiography, theology, poetry and the sciences flourished. Historians such as Movses Khorenatsi and Yeghishe, along with men of letters trained in the monastic schools, set down the memory of the people in writing.
That treasure of manuscripts, illuminated over the centuries by monk copyists and miniaturists, is kept today in the Matenadaran in Yerevan, one of the most important repositories of ancient manuscripts on the planet. For Armenians, Mashtots' alphabet was not just a religious tool: it was the ark that preserved the language and identity of a nation that, in the following centuries, would lose its political independence again and again, but never its culture.
With the fall of the Arsacid kingdom in the early 5th century, Armenia was divided between the Byzantine Empire and Sasanian Persia, and from the 7th century it came under the rule of the Arab caliphates, which governed it as a semi-autonomous province under local princes. Out of that long foreign tutelage, however, an Armenian state was reborn: around 885 the Bagratid dynasty restored the kingdom, and in 961 it set up its capital at Ani, the dazzling 'city of a thousand and one churches', which came to rival Constantinople and Baghdad in splendour.
That flowering was cut short by successive waves of invaders. The Byzantines annexed the kingdom in the mid-11th century, and shortly afterwards the Seljuk Turks broke through after the decisive battle of Manzikert (1071). Then came the Mongols in the 13th century, the Turkmen, Tamerlane's devastating campaign and, finally, the long partition of Armenia between the Ottoman Empire to the west and Safavid Persia to the east, which divided the country between them in the 16th century. Millions of Armenians remained subjects of those empires for centuries.
While historic Armenia fell under foreign rule, a last great independent kingdom emerged far away: the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia, on the Mediterranean coast of present-day Turkey, founded by refugees and established as a kingdom in 1198 under Leo I of the Rubenid dynasty. Cilicia was a key ally of the Crusaders, a trading bridge between Europe and the East and a hub of Armenian culture, until it fell to the Egyptian Mamluks in 1375. With Cilicia the last Armenian monarchy came to an end, and the people entered more than five centuries without a state of their own.
At the start of the 20th century, several million Armenians lived as Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire, mainly in the eastern provinces of Anatolia, their ancestral homeland. During the First World War, the Young Turk government, headed by leaders such as Talat Pasha, accused the Armenian population of colluding with enemy Russia and set in motion a systematic plan of extermination. On 24 April 1915, in Constantinople, hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, writers and community leaders were arrested and later murdered; that date is remembered as the beginning of the genocide and is today the national day of remembrance.
The arrests were followed by mass deportations: entire columns of elderly people, women and children were forced to march on foot towards the deserts of Syria, particularly towards Deir ez-Zor, in death marches marked by hunger, thirst, disease and massacres. Historians estimate that around 1.5 million Armenians died between 1915 and 1923. It was one of the first systematic genocides of the modern era, and the very term 'genocide' was coined partly to describe what happened to the Armenians.
The survivors scattered across the world (the Middle East, France, the United States, Latin America, Argentina itself), giving rise to a large diaspora that kept the language, the faith and the memory alive far from the homeland. The genocide has been recognised by numerous countries and organisations, but the Turkish state, successor to the Ottoman one, denies it to this day, maintaining that there were deaths in the context of the war but no plan of extermination. That official denial keeps the issue an open wound and a central demand of the Armenian nation and its diaspora.
The collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 brought a brief hope: on 28 May 1918, after halting the Ottoman advance at the battle of Sardarabad, the Armenians proclaimed the First Republic of Armenia, the first independent Armenian state since the Middle Ages. It did not last long: cornered between Turkey and Bolshevik Russia, the young republic was Sovietised at the end of 1920. Armenia joined first the Transcaucasian Federation and, from 1936, became a full Soviet republic within the USSR.
The seven Soviet decades brought industrialisation, mass literacy and the growth of Yerevan into a modern capital, but also Stalinist repression and an absence of freedoms. The 1988 earthquake, which devastated Gyumri and Spitak and killed tens of thousands of people, struck the country on the eve of great changes. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia regained its independence on 21 September 1991, confirmed by a popular referendum.
From the very start, independence was marked by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, over a region with an Armenian majority located within the borders of Azerbaijan. The first war (1988-1994) left tens of thousands dead and a fragile Armenian hold on the enclave. Decades of stalled negotiations led to the 2020 war, in which Azerbaijan took back much of the territory, and to the offensive of September 2023, after which almost the entire Armenian population of Karabakh fled to Armenia. At home, the 2018 Velvet Revolution brought Nikol Pashinyan to power in a peaceful transition. Today Armenia is a democratic republic that, backed by its huge diaspora and its millennia-old heritage, is seeking to reinvent itself as a country of innovation, tourism and culture while still looking its history straight in the eye.
The 5 histories, one after another. Use the buttons above to jump to the one you want.
Aragatsotn province is built around Mount Aragats, an extinct four-peaked volcano whose northern summit, at 4.090 metres, is the highest point in present-day Armenia. On its slopes, at more than 2.300 metres above sea level, stands the fortress of Amberd, whose name means 'fortress in the clouds'. Its main walls date from the 7th century, and in the Middle Ages it was one of the strongholds of the powerful noble families Pahlavuni and Vachutian.
Next to the fortress stands the church of Vahramashen, built in 1026 by Prince Vahram Pahlavuni, a delicate example of medieval Armenian architecture. Battered by Mongols and Seljuks, the complex was abandoned, but its silhouette against the snows of Aragats is still one of the most striking landscapes in the country.
On the lower slopes of the same mountain are other landmarks, such as the Byurakan astronomical observatory and the site of Karahunj or Zorats Karer, sometimes called the 'Armenian Stonehenge', which bear witness to the long human presence in these highlands.
Capital of Shirak Province, Gyumri is Armenia's second city. Over its history it changed its name several times: it was Alexandropol under the Russian Empire, from 1837, and Leninakan during the Soviet era. Its historic centre, the Kumayri district, keeps entire streets of black and red stone houses from the 19th and early 20th centuries, an architectural heritage unique in the country.
Gyumri's modern history is marked by the tragedy of 7 December 1988, when a magnitude 6.8 earthquake with a nearby epicentre devastated north-western Armenia. In Gyumri and neighbouring Spitak tens of thousands of people died, and most buildings were destroyed or badly damaged. Reconstruction was slow, and the city carried the scars for years.
Despite everything, Gyumri bounced back with a powerful cultural identity: it is famous throughout Armenia for its artistic tradition, its music, its crafts and its distinctive sense of humour. Today it is recognised as a capital of bohemian life and the arts, and its workshops, museums and cafés draw travellers looking for the most authentic Armenia.
North-western Armenia, close to the borders with Turkey and Georgia, was for centuries a crossing point and a region fought over by empires. In medieval times it was part of the Bagratid kingdom, whose legendary capital, Ani, now lies on the other side of the border, in Turkish territory, but belongs to the same historical and cultural roots as Shirak.
The region has many churches and monasteries, such as the Marmashen complex near Gyumri, a remarkable example of 10th- and 11th-century religious architecture. These churches, built in volcanic stone, bear witness to the cultural splendour Armenia enjoyed under the Bagratid dynasty before the invasions.
Today Aragatsotn and Shirak combine this historical heritage with high-mountain landscapes, pastures and traditional villages, in one of the most genuine and least crowded parts of the country.
In Gegharkunik Province lies Lake Sevan, the largest body of water in Armenia and one of the biggest high-mountain lakes in the world, sitting almost 1,900 metres above sea level. Its deep blue waters, ringed by mountains, act as a true inland sea for a landlocked country, and in summer its beaches fill with Armenian families.
During the Soviet era, an ambitious irrigation and hydroelectric scheme caused the lake's level to drop dangerously, exposing land and transforming its ecology. Since then, efforts have been made to restore and stabilise the water level and protect this key ecosystem, on which much of the country's freshwater supply depends.
Sevan is also a cultural symbol: its trout and crayfish are part of the national cuisine, and its shores bring together nature, history and spirituality on a single horizon.
The emblem of Lake Sevan is Sevanavank Monastery, perched high on a peninsula — originally an island — that juts out into the water. It was founded in 874 by Princess Mariam, daughter of the Bagratid king Ashot I, and its two dark-stone churches, Surb Astvatsatsin and Surb Arakelots, are sober, beautiful examples of Armenian monastic architecture.
Until the lake level fell in the Soviet era, Sevanavank stood on a real island, reachable only by boat; as the water dropped, the island became a peninsula joined to the mainland. The monks who lived there led a life of isolation and penance.
Today, climbing the stairway up to the monastery to take in the vast blue mirror of Sevan is one of the most photographed experiences in Armenia, especially at sunset, when the light sets the stones and the water aglow.
North of Lake Sevan, in Tavush Province, lies Dilijan, a mountain town surrounded by dense forests that earned it the nickname 'the Armenian Switzerland'. Its clean air and springs made Dilijan a famous place for rest and sanatoriums in the Soviet era, popular with artists, writers and composers.
The old town, around the restored Sharambeyan Street, recreates the atmosphere of a traditional Armenian village with wooden and stone houses, craft workshops and museums. The area is part of Dilijan National Park, a haven of biodiversity crossed by hiking trails.
From Dilijan you can reach some of the most beautiful monasteries in the north, tucked away in the greenery, such as Haghartsin and Goshavank, medieval gems that rise out of the green of the forests. Dilijan thus brings together nature, culture and spirituality in a unique setting.
In Lori Province, above the deep wooded valleys of the Debed River, stands Haghpat Monastery, one of the great spiritual and cultural centres of medieval Armenia. Founded around 976, in the time of Queen Khosrovanuysh, at the height of the Bagratid dynasty, it grew from the 10th to the 13th century into an important centre of theology, science and art.
The complex brings together churches, a bell tower, a refectory, a scriptorium and remarkable khachkars, the finely carved stone crosses that are a hallmark of Armenian art. Haghpat survived invasions and looting and kept a rich library of manuscripts.
For its historical and architectural value, the monastery was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996, together with its sister Sanahin. Its setting, among mountains and forests, makes it one of the most impressive visits in the north of the country.
A few kilometres from Haghpat, and visible from it, is Sanahin Monastery, its historical twin. Its name is popularly translated as 'this one is older than that one', a nod to the friendly rivalry between the two complexes. Also founded in the 10th century, Sanahin was famous for its academy, or higher school, where theology, philosophy and the sciences were taught, and for its school of miniaturists and calligraphers.
The complex keeps churches, an academic gallery, a scriptorium and a large collection of khachkars, as well as tombs of the local nobility. It was a true intellectual centre of medieval Armenia, where many manuscripts were copied and illuminated.
Together with Haghpat, Sanahin makes up the World Heritage Site of the Debed valley monasteries. The village of Sanahin was also, in the 20th century, home to the Mikoyan family, famous for the Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan and the aircraft designer Artem Mikoyan, co-creator of the MiG fighter jets.
Lori Province, in northern Armenia on the border with Georgia, is a region of wooded mountains, deep gorges and rivers, crossed by the Debed valley. In the Middle Ages it was a prosperous territory under the Bagratid kings and their vassals, and its wealth allowed the great monasteries that are now its greatest treasure to flourish.
Besides Haghpat and Sanahin, Lori is home to other historic sites and towns such as Vanadzor, the country's third city. The region combines religious heritage with beautiful natural landscapes and an industrial past from the Soviet era.
Lori is also a land of poets: Hovhannes Tumanyan, regarded as Armenia's national poet, came from here, and his work gathered the legends and the soul of northern Armenia. The province thus offers a unique mix of nature, history and culture.
In Vayots Dzor Province, at the end of a narrow canyon with red rock walls, lies Noravank Monastery, one of the most beautiful complexes in Armenia. Founded in the 13th century, it was an important religious centre and the residence of the Orbelian princes, lords of the region.
Its best-known church is the two-storey Surb Astvatsatsin, whose façade is climbed by a narrow, dizzying cantilevered outdoor staircase. Much of its refined sculptural decoration, with reliefs of God the Father and the Virgin, is the work of the great medieval architect, sculptor and miniaturist Momik, who worked and died here.
The contrast between the golden stone of the churches and the reddish cliffs around them, especially glowing at sunset, makes Noravank one of the most spectacular sights in southern Armenia.
The village of Areni, in Vayots Dzor, is synonymous with wine in Armenia. In a nearby cave, the Areni-1 archaeological complex, what is considered the oldest known winery in the world was discovered in 2007: a complete installation with a wine press, fermentation vat and storage jars, dated to around 4100 BC, which makes it about six thousand years old.
In the same cave, a few years earlier, the world's oldest leather shoe preserved in one piece was also found, confirming the site's extraordinary archaeological richness. These finds back up Armenia's long winemaking tradition, as one of the places where humans domesticated the grapevine.
Today Areni is a must-stop on the Armenian wine route: its family wineries make reds from the native areni grape, and every autumn the village holds a lively wine festival that draws visitors from all over the country.
Also in Vayots Dzor, more than 2,000 metres up and surrounded by forest, is Jermuk (Yermuk), Armenia's most famous mountain spa town. Its name comes from the Armenian word for 'hot', a reference to its thermal and mineral springs, known and used for centuries.
During the Soviet era, Jermuk grew into a large spa and rest resort, with sanatoriums making use of its healing waters. The Jermuk mineral water brand, bottled here, is one of the best known in the country and across the region.
Besides its baths, Jermuk is famous for its waterfall, nicknamed 'the mermaid's hair', and for its mountain scenery, ideal for hiking and relaxing. It is a refreshing stop on the road to Armenia's deep south.
In Syunik Province, Armenia's far south, Tatev Monastery rises on a cliff edge, one of the country's great medieval monastic complexes. Founded between the 9th and 10th centuries, it was a powerful religious, economic and cultural centre, and in the 14th and 15th centuries it housed the famous University of Tatev, one of the most important institutions of higher learning in medieval Armenia, where theology, philosophy, miniature painting and calligraphy flourished.
Perched above the deep gorge of the Vorotan River, Tatev was for centuries a spiritual stronghold of southern Armenia. Its main church, Surb Poghos-Petros, and its curious swinging pillar, the Gavazan, are part of its heritage.
In 2010 the 'Tatev cable car', or 'Wings of Tatev', opened, recognised by Guinness as the longest non-stop reversible cable car in the world, with about 5.7 kilometres flying over the gorge. This attraction turned Tatev into one of the most visited destinations in the south and a symbol of modern Armenian tourism.
Yerevan is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world: it was born in 782 BC as the Urartian fortress of Erebuni, founded by King Argishti I on a hill overlooking the Araxes valley, with Mount Ararat always on the horizon. For centuries it was a secondary town under Persians, Arabs, Ottomans and Russians, until in 1918, with the First Republic, it became the capital of an independent Armenia.
The city's modern face was shaped by the architect Alexander Tamanian, who in the 1920s and 1930s redesigned it on a radial plan around Republic Square, using the local volcanic tuff in pink and reddish tones that earned it the nickname 'the pink city'. Today Yerevan is a vibrant capital of cafés, wine, brandy and cultural life, crowned by the monumental stairway of the Cascade.
Yerevan also holds the nation's memory: the Matenadaran safeguards thousands of ancient manuscripts, and on the hill of Tsitsernakaberd stands the Armenian Genocide memorial, where an eternal flame honours the victims of 1915. The city concentrates much of the country's heritage, energy and creativity.
A few kilometres from Yerevan, in the city of Vagharshapat, lies Etchmiadzin, the spiritual heart of the Armenian people and seat of the Catholicos, the highest authority of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Its cathedral, whose founding dates back to 301-303 and is attributed to Saint Gregory the Illuminator, is considered one of the oldest Christian cathedrals in the world.
The name Etchmiadzin means 'the place where the Only Begotten descended', a reference to a vision in which Christ is said to have shown Gregory the spot to build the church. The cathedral together with the nearby churches of St Hripsime and St Gayane was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.
For Armenians all over the world, Etchmiadzin is what Rome is to Catholics or Mecca to Muslims: the centre of a faith that has been, for seventeen centuries, the pillar of national identity. Its treasures include revered relics and a remarkable collection of sacred art.
In Kotayk province, perched above a spectacular gorge of basalt columns, stands the temple of Garni, the only colonnaded Greco-Roman building that survives in Armenia and in the entire Caucasus. It was built in the 1st century AD, probably under King Tiridates I, and dedicated to a sun deity of the Armenian pagan pantheon, with an elegant Ionic colonnade.
When Armenia became Christian, the temple escaped destruction, according to tradition, because it was used as a summer residence for the royal family. It survived for centuries until an earthquake brought it down in 1679. The monument you see today is the result of a painstaking reconstruction carried out by Soviet archaeologists between 1969 and 1975, who reassembled the structure using its original stones.
Garni, with its classical temple hanging over the Azat river canyon and the basalt formations known as the 'symphony of stones', is one of the most unusual sights in the country and a testament to Armenia's pre-Christian past.
Just a short way from Garni, wedged between cliffs, is the monastery of Geghard, partly carved into the living rock of the mountain. Its full name, Geghardavank, means 'monastery of the spear', a reference to the relic of the Holy Lance that, according to tradition, was kept there. Founded over a sacred spring and rebuilt in the 12th and 13th centuries, with chapels and churches hollowed out of the stone, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.
Further south, in Ararat province and almost on the border with Turkey, the monastery of Khor Virap occupies one of the most sacred places in Armenia. According to tradition, it was here that King Tiridates III held Gregory the Illuminator prisoner in a deep pit for about thirteen years, before converting and making the country the first Christian state in the world. 'Khor Virap' means precisely 'deep pit'.
The monastery, with majestic Mount Ararat in the background (now in Turkish territory but an eternal symbol of Armenia), offers one of the most iconic views in the country and is a place of pilgrimage full of meaning for the whole Armenian people.
Hardly anything that happened to Armenia happened on its own: these are the histories next door.
