Yerevan: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Yerevan is older than Rome — the fortress on the hill was founded in 782 BC and the date is carved on a stone — but almost nothing in the centre is older than a century. In 1924 an architect named Alexander Tamanian was given the city and told to replan it, and he drew a circle with radial avenues over the top of the existing town and had it built in volcanic tuff, which is pink. Most of old Yerevan was demolished to make it. Two hours, and the Cascade is a climb.
A short history of Yerevan
Yerevan is one of the oldest cities in the world whose founding date is known: in 782 BC the Urartian king Argishti I built the fortress of Erebuni, which is recorded in an inscription carved in stone. For centuries the city passed between Persian and Ottoman rulers, until Russia captured it in 1827. In 1918 it became the capital of independent Armenia, and from 1920 the capital of the Soviet republic. In 1924 the architect Alexander Tamanian replanned it, and many of its buildings were built of pink tuff stone. In 2018 the city marked 2,800 years since its founding, and Mount Ararat can be seen from it on clear days.
The ten best sights in Yerevan
1Matenadaran1,500 dram, and it holds 23,000 Armenian manuscripts
2Genocide MemorialFree, and the museum beside it is free too
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3Genocide Museum
Free, closed Mondays, and allow two hours
4History Museum2,000 dram, and a 5,500-year-old leather shoe is in it
5National Gallery1,500 dram, eight floors, and the Aivazovsky room is the one
6Cafesjian CenterFree on the steps, 1,500 dram inside, and Botero in the garden
7Parajanov Museum1,000 dram, and he made collages in prison out of milk-bottle tops
8Erebuni Fortress1,500 dram, from 782 BC, and the city is named after it
9Blue MosqueFree, from 1766, and the only working mosque in Armenia
10Katoghike ChurchFree, and it is seven metres across — the oldest in the city
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Yerevan →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Yerevan:
Free walking tours in Yerevan
A city rebuilt pink
Yerevan is older than Rome — the fortress on the hill was founded in 782 BC and the date is carved on a stone — but almost nothing in the centre is older than a century. In 1924 an architect named Alexander Tamanian was given the city and told to replan it, and he drew a circle with radial avenues over the top of the existing town and had it built in volcanic tuff, which is pink. Most of old Yerevan was demolished to make it. Two hours, and the Cascade is a climb.
- Republic Square · Tamanian designed it as an oval rather than a rectangle, with the buildings in volcanic tuff of three different shades. The pattern in the paving is copied from an Armenian carpet, and from the museum steps you can see it as one design.
- History Museum · The oldest leather shoe ever found is here — five thousand five hundred years old, found in a cave at Areni in 2008, stuffed with grass and still holding its shape. The same cave produced the oldest known winery, a thousand years older than any other.
- Northern Avenue · Tamanian drew this avenue in 1924 and it was not built for eighty-three years — it opened in 2007, after several hundred families were moved out of the houses that stood in the way. It is the one thing in his plan that was finished last.
- Opera Theatre · Tamanian’s own building, and he solved a problem nobody had solved: two halls, an opera house and a concert hall, built back to back inside one circular shell so that each has its own entrance. He died in 1936 before it was finished.
- Cascade · Five hundred and seventy-two steps up a hillside, begun in 1971 and abandoned half-finished when the Soviet Union collapsed. It stayed a concrete ruin until an Armenian-American businessman paid to finish it in the 2000s and filled it with sculpture; on a clear morning Ararat is directly ahead.
- Matenadaran · Twenty-three thousand manuscripts, and the collection survived because villagers carried the books out on foot in 1915 — some were buried, some were hidden in walls, and one was carried in two halves by two women who did not know each other. Both halves reached here.
Remembering, in a country that must
A million and a half Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1923, and the Armenian diaspora is larger than the population of Armenia — about eight million outside, under three million in. Everything in the country is shaped by that arithmetic: the money that built half of Yerevan came from abroad, and the memorial on the hill is the one place every visitor is taken. Two hours, and it is not an easy walk.
- Genocide Memorial · Twelve basalt slabs lean inward round an eternal flame — one for each lost province of western Armenia — and a forty-four-metre stele beside them is split in two, the smaller part standing for the survivors. It was built in 1967 after a demonstration of a hundred thousand people forced Moscow to allow it.
- Genocide Museum · Built into the hillside so that it does not interrupt the memorial above it. Among the documents are the telegrams of Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador in Constantinople, reporting what he was being told in 1915 — and the replies telling him it was not America’s business.
- Mother Armenia · A statue of Stalin stood on this pedestal from 1950 until 1962, when it was taken down at night and a soldier died in the removal. Mother Armenia replaced him in 1967, twenty-two metres tall with a sword held flat across her hands, facing Turkey.
- Parajanov Museum · Sergei Parajanov made four films and spent four years in a Soviet labour camp for them. In prison he had no materials, so he made collages from foil milk-bottle tops and pressed flowers — Fellini saw one and said it was worth more than most films. The museum is his house.
- Cafesjian Center · Gerard Cafesjian was the son of refugees who settled in Brooklyn, made a fortune in publishing, and spent much of it finishing the Cascade and filling it with his collection. Botero’s cat and the smoking woman stand on the steps and are free to walk past.
- Kond · The one quarter of old Yerevan that Tamanian’s plan did not demolish — lanes a metre wide, houses built on top of each other up a hill, and people still living in them. It has been scheduled for clearance since the 1980s and is still there.
Older than the alphabet
Armenia was the first state to adopt Christianity, in 301, and the Armenian alphabet was invented in 405 by a monk who designed it so the Bible could be written in it — thirty-six letters, still in use, and nothing else uses them. The monasteries outside the city are carved into cliffs and canyons rather than built in towns, because they were built to be hard to reach. A full day, and a car or a tour is the only way.
- Echmiadzin · The oldest cathedral in the world, begun in 301 on the spot where, the story says, Christ appeared to Gregory the Illuminator and struck the ground with a golden hammer — Echmiadzin means "the Only Begotten descended". It is the seat of the Armenian church to this day.
- Zvartnots · A circular cathedral three storeys high, built in 643 and the most ambitious building in the Caucasus — and it fell down in an earthquake three hundred years later. Nobody knew what it had looked like until an architect reconstructed it on paper from the fallen stones in 1905.
- Garni Temple · The only Greco-Roman colonnaded building left in the former Soviet Union, built in the first century and dedicated to a sun god. It survived the conversion to Christianity because a king used it as a summer house, and then it fell in the earthquake of 1679 and was rebuilt from its own stones in the 1970s.
- Symphony of Stones · A wall of hexagonal basalt columns hanging over the gorge below Garni, formed when lava cooled slowly and cracked into perfect shapes. The walk down from the temple takes about forty minutes, and almost nobody on a tour bus does it.
- Geghard Monastery · Half the monastery is not built but carved — chambers cut directly into the cliff, including one hollowed downward from a hole in the rock above, with a dome shaped from the inside out. The acoustics are such that a choir singing in it can be heard without amplification outside.
- Khor Virap · Gregory the Illuminator was kept in a pit here for thirteen years by a king who then fell ill, let him out, was cured, and converted the country. The pit is still there and you climb down a ladder into it. Ararat is six kilometres away across a closed border, and this is where Armenians come to look at it.
Getting to Yerevan and getting around
- Zvartnots Airport · Bus 201 to Republic Square is 300 dram and takes 40 minutes
- Yerevan Station · The night train to Tbilisi leaves at half past nine
- Kilikia · The main bus station, and marshrutkas to everywhere leave here
- Republic Square · The metro is one line, 100 dram a ride, and it is deep
Cheap eats in Yerevan
Eight counters where Yerevan eats standing. Lavash is baked by slapping dough onto the wall of a clay pit oven and peeling it off thirty seconds later — it is on the UNESCO list, and it is wrapped round everything. Coffee is made in sand, not water, and costs about five hundred dram.
- GUM Market · Open 9 to 7, and they will haggle
- Tumanyan Khinkali · Open all night, and dumplings are about 300 dram each
- Karas · About 2,000-3,000 dram a dish, and several branches
- Pak Shuka · A 1952 market hall, and the facade alone is worth the stop
- Vernissage · Weekends only, and the food stalls are at the far end
- Jazzve · Coffee made in hot sand, about 500 dram, and open late
- Sherep · About 5,000 dram a head, and book at weekends
- Achajour · On Saryan Street, wine by the glass from 1,000 dram
Museums in Yerevan
- Matenadaran · 1,500 dram, closed Sundays and Mondays
- History Museum · 2,000 dram, and the 5,500-year-old shoe is upstairs
- National Gallery · 1,500 dram, eight floors, and start at the top
- Genocide Museum · Free, closed Mondays, and two hours is the minimum
- Parajanov Museum · 1,000 dram, his own house, and the collages are the point
- Erebuni Museum · 1,500 dram with the fortress, and closed Mondays
- Cafesjian Center · Free on the steps and in the garden, 1,500 dram inside
- Yerevan Brandy Company · 5,500 dram with two tastings, and book ahead
Nature and day trips near Yerevan
- Lake Sevan · An hour by marshrutka from Kilikia, about 1,000 dram
- Symphony of Stones · Free, below Garni, and the walk down takes 40 minutes
- Hrazdan Gorge · Free, the canyon under the city, and a path along the river
- Victory Park · Free, above the Cascade, and Ararat from the top
- Lovers’ Park · Free, redesigned in 2008, and open until midnight
- Dilijan · 90 minutes by marshrutka, and the forest walks are free
- Noravank · Free, in a red canyon, and the rock turns orange at sunset
- Tatev · The 5.7km cable car is the longest in the world, 5,500 dram
Things to do in Yerevan with kids
- Cascade · Free, an escalator inside, and sculpture on every level
- Victory Park · Free to enter, a small fairground, and a lake with boats
- Yerevan Zoo · 2,500 dram, and it is mostly Caucasian animals
- Republic Square fountains · Free, every evening at nine from May to October
- Garni Temple · 1,500 dram, a Roman temple on a cliff, and room to run
- Lovers’ Park · Free, a playground, and a stream running through it
Live music in Yerevan
- Opera Theatre · From 3,000 dram, and the square outside is the meeting place
- Khachaturian Hall · From 3,000 dram, and the hall is the opera building
- Malkhas Jazz Club · Entry about 3,000 dram, and the music starts late
- Mezzo · Classical and jazz in a cellar, and the acoustics are good
- Republican Stadium · The national team, and tickets are about 2,000 dram
- Cascade · Free concerts on the steps on summer evenings
Nightlife in Yerevan
- Saryan Street · A glass is 1,000-1,500 dram, and it fills after nine
- Northern Avenue · Pedestrian, lit, and where the city walks at night
- Republic Square · The dancing fountains at nine, and it is free
- Abovyan Street · The old street, and the bars are in the courtyards off it
- Green Bean · Open from seven in the morning until late, and several branches
- Cascade steps · People sit on them until midnight, and it costs nothing
Frequently asked questions about Yerevan
What is there to see in Yerevan?
The top sights in Yerevan are Matenadaran, Genocide Memorial and Genocide Museum. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Yerevan?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Yerevan without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Yerevan?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Yerevan, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: A city rebuilt pink.
How do you get to Yerevan and get around?
The main ways are Zvartnots Airport, Yerevan Station and Kilikia. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Yerevan, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Yerevan that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Yerevan for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.