Yerevan Audio Tours

Yerevan gets its nickname, the Pink City, from the rose-colored tuff stone that the Soviets used to rebuild it in the 1920s and 30s when architect Alexander Tamanian drew up an entirely new master plan on a radial-circular grid. But the city is older than any of that. The fortress of Erebuni was built on this hill in 782 BC by King Argishti I of Urartu, making Yerevan one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It predates Rome by 29 years. From almost anywhere in the city, if the sky is clear, you can see Mount Ararat rising enormous and snowcapped to the southwest, sitting in Turkish territory since 1920, the sacred mountain of the Armenian people visible from their capital and permanently out of reach.

Republic Square at the center of the city is a good place to start.

The ensemble of Soviet neoclassical buildings surrounding the square, faced in pink and grey tuff, houses the National Museum of Armenia and the History Museum. The Cascade, a giant stepped monument climbing the hillside northwest of the center, integrates open-air sculpture, cafes, and galleries into its terraces and offers one of the best views of Ararat that the city provides. The Matenadaran, a research institute housing one of the world's largest collections of ancient manuscripts, sits at the top of Mesrop Mashtots Avenue and holds over 17,000 manuscripts dating back to the 5th century.