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We also noticed here a man offering us the use of his doves. These were not the traditional peace doves. They were the likes of the birds which Armenian legends tell you Noah used when he landed on Mount Ararat.
This was also the closest to Mount Ararat, in Turkey, that one could get in Armenia. We could see the Aras River which separated the two countries. On the Armenian side there was a Russian military base facing us. “The Russians are here to protect our border with Turkey,” our guide said.
The border village of Pokr Vedi was only 5 miles south of Artashat. Here we climbed a small hill to the compound of the Khor Virap Monastery. From there we could see the houses of Turkish villages on the other side of the border.
The road we were driving on was historic. Although hardly busy today this was a strategic highway. It connected Yerevan to Goris, close to the border of Nagorno-Karabakh and on the way to the Iranian border. “This highway goes to Iran which is about 400 kilometers from Yerevan,” the guide said. Much closer was the Turkish border.
The bounty of the valley’s soil is owed to the two volcanic mountain ranges of Ararat and Aragats which bracket it. Its plentiful water comes from Lake Sevan as well as local rivers.
According to our guide: “47% of the population of Armenia is in agriculture.” Much of that agriculture is in the uniquely fertile Ararat Valley which we were now driving through.
Next to this spire that was a group of 12 tilting basalt slabs guarding an eternal flame inside. Our guide said “This is to symbolize the refugees who were forced out of Turkey into the Syrian Desert, huddling around a fire.” The 12 slabs represent the 12 lost provinces of Western Armenia.
We walked on a wide path along a simple wall to our left which was engraved with the names of communities in Turkey where Armenians were massacred in the Genocide. “The number of those Armenians exceeds 300, 000,” our guide said. Facing us on the right was a 44 meter high, arrow-shaped stele of granite with a line dividing it.
Alas, Parajanov died before the construction was completed, but that house has since become a memorial museum where over 600 of his works are on display.
It was now the age of perestroika, and Yerevan claimed Parajanov as its own. It proceeded to build him a house overlooking the Hrazdan gorge with a great view of Mount Ararat.
In 1939 the collection was moved from Echmiadzin to Yerevan. A special research institute for the preservation and study of manuscript was added in the new Matenadaran building. The building itself was renamed Mesrop Mashtots in 1962. It is Mashtots’ huge statue that sits in front and middle of the standing, smaller statues of the six other Armenian scholars and writers.
The Blue Mosque was located on Mashtots Avenue on the other side from the covered food market. On the day of my visit there were only two other tourists with their guide. Nor did I see many other people. The Mosque was much bigger inside than it appeared from the outside.
Even the Blue Mosque had been turned into the Yerevan City Museum by the Soviets. As a gesture of good relations with Iran, the independent Republic of Armenia allowed the Iranian government to repair the Blue Mosque in the 1990s It was now also called the Iranian Cultural Center.
Mashtots virtually connected two of Yerevan’s landmark buildings at the extremes of town, the Matenadaran Museum and the Brandy Factory. The latter has the distinction of incorporating some of the original walls of the seven-hectare fortress built by the local Persian Governor Husayn Ali Khan in the middle of the 18th century That fortress was destroyed in the 1880s.
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