Thought Provoking Statues – Yerevan

In Yerevan, the statues made me think and provided warnings about what can happen in life. Although understated, all the statues in Yerevan have a story to tell. The first sculpture I noticed was called “Kara Bala” on Abovian Street, a statue of an old man holding some roses. Because of some new road building, they moved the piece from its original position. This spot was where a man called Karapet used to stand in the 1930s and give roses to the prettiest girls who walked by, including an actress called Arus Voskanian. 

Now, Karapet was married with a beautiful wife and child at home and grew roses in his garden, but none of this stopped him from falling for the actress. Not surprisingly, the actress had another admirer and Karapet became so jealous of this other man he murdered him. Karapet ended up in prison. When Karapet was released, he had lost everything – his wife, child, house, roses, and the actress. He cut a forlorn figure in Yerevan, wandering around with a wine bottle, but still offering any flowers he could find to girls in the street. One cold morning, they found him frozen to death, lying on a rock. 

Karapet’s nickname was Kara Bala, because of his dark complexion. He is immortalized in stone for all to see and to take heed of his story of what happens when love turns into obsession and becomes blind to all the good things we have in our lives.

In the Green Belt area of north and east Yerevan are more poignant statues. The Assyrian Genocide Memorial, unveiled in 2012, commemorates the lives of the 750,000 Assyrians (about 75% of their entire population) killed in genocidal attacks by the Ottomans during the period 1914 – 1923. I have to admit ignorance on my part. I’d known about the Armenian genocide for many years, but what I hadn’t appreciated was the scale of the atrocities against Assyrians and the Ottoman Greeks. 

The Genocide Memorial – Yerevan

After the establishment of Soviet rule in Armenia and especially during the reign of Stalin, talk of the Armenian-Turkish conflict was proscribed. Any talk about the Armenian Genocide or western Armenia were regarded as manifestations of nationalism and punished with imprisonment, exile, or shooting. The situation gradually began to change in the second half of the 1950s, due to Khrushchev’s “thaw” policy 

The Armenian Genocide Memorial complex is Armenia’s official memorial dedicated to the victims of the Armenian genocide. Building of the complex began in 1966 on the hill of Tsitsernakaberd. If you visit only one place in Yerevan, make it this one. If you want more details on the genocide, please read the previous essay on Yerevan’s memorials. 

Every year on 24th April, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, thousands of Armenians gather at the memorial to commemorate the victims of the genocide. The people who gather in Tsitsernakaberd lay fresh flowers out of respect for all the people who died.

Around The Cascade – Yerevan

The northern part of Yerevan has some outstanding sights, which visitors should not miss. The first place is called the Matenadaran, displaying Armenian manuscripts of varying degrees of antiquity. This museum is almost the only place in Armenia where this quality of manuscript is available. Built in 1957, when only one room displayed one percent of the 14,000 items in the collection, recent additions to the building have allowed the various Bibles, rituals, colophonies, gospels, and miscellanies to be shown in 5 rooms of varying sizes. 

The trick here is to watch out for the guided tours and try to work out where they will go next, so that you can linger over certain pieces without being surrounded by twenty people with cameras and sharp elbows, who point at everything when there’s no need. If you have never seen an illuminated manuscript before, then you should know they are worth inspecting, because the detail and artistic merit involved are superlative.  

The manuscripts at the Matenadaran are, of course, the ones that have survived the vagaries of time and the actions of mindless vandals who destroy for the sake of destruction – indeed during the Armenian genocide the Ottomans destroyed all the Armenian manuscripts they could lay their hands on. 

It’s almost heartbreaking to think that the greatest illuminated manuscript painter of all time might be unknown to us because people destroyed all his work. It would be like there being no Michelangelo sculptures, no JMW Turner paintings, or no Van Gogh pictures. Manuscripts were destroyed because they were associated with Christianity, but even the Mongols valued artisans and artists, the work they produced, and the contribution they provided to culture within society. 

At the Matenadaran there are many copies of older works such as Ptolemy’s Geography, showing Armenia stretching from The Caspian Sea almost to The Black Sea – a source of pride for Armenians – and a copy of a work by Gregory of Nyssa (333 – 394) about the structure of Man. There’s a book of Geometry by Abu Ali ibn Sind, the man responsible for introducing the decimal point to the world, a book of Palatine Gospels from 1336, and an Armenian gospel from Echmiadzin written in 989. There’s a Tamil manuscript written on palm leaves.

Akhaltsikhe

On the way to Akhaltsikhe, I headed through the forested gorges of the Borjomi Nature Reserve to Borjomi Spa, where I visited the Borjomi Mineral Water Park or Ekaterina Park. Just outside the gates on the left-hand side, the last villa has a wonderful arabesque decoration on the ceiling of its balcony, built for the Persian consul in 1892. At the height of its popularity, Borjomi used to fill over 300 million bottles annually and was one of the main mineral waters of the Soviet Union. The former bottling plant now houses a library. Nearby, under a pavilion, two ladies dispense free Borjomi water from taps into plastic cups for anyone who wants to try this salty tasting water. A cable car that takes visitors to the Sadgeri Arboretum on the plateau above the park. This arboretum covers 136 hectares and is laid out for spa visitors to go on long invigorating walks through the forest.  

Akhaltsikhe is a charming town which translates literally to ‘new fortress’. The imposing fortress dominates the skyline. Its old streets are home to a large Armenian population, and the forests just outside the town hide the beautiful 10th-century Saphara Monastery. 

The original name of the fortress in the 9th century was Lomsia, meaning “Lion” in Georgian. At the end of the 12th century, Lomsia gained the new name Akhal-tsikhe. Rabati was the name given to the trading quarter of the fortress, where mainly Jewish merchants and artisans lived. Down the years, the name Akhaltsikhe became the name of the town and the name Rabati applied to the fortress itself. 

Rabati Castle looks splendid because in May 2011 a major restoration project took place and many buildings destroyed in previous battles and sieges were rebuilt. As part of the project, the Akhmediye Mosque, the minaret, the madrasah, the Jakeli castle, the baths, the citadel, the walls of the fortress and the Orthodox Church were all renovated and / or reconstructed. The fountains play, the water runs, and the flowers bloom in the sunlight. 

I headed down the steps from the castle and decided I would like to have a very late lunch or early dinner at one restaurant that said it was open. There was no one around, so I found a menu and decided what I’d like to eat and drink. The waitress / owner came out from a backroom and stared at me. I mimed eating, and she pointed at a table – I was the only person there, so there was quite a choice – and I sat down. After she took my order, I got the impression they were surprised I was there, but the food appeared quickly and was delicious, so I can have no complaints.

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Telavi and the way to Azerbaijan

If you’re heading towards Azerbaijan, then there are several places to visit on the way to the border. The first is the city of Telavi. 

Telavi is unusual because it has four citadels, the 17th-century Batonistsikhe, the 9th- / 10th-century Dzveli Galavani, the 16th-century Korchibashishvilebis Tsikhe and the 18th-century Vakhvakhishvilebis. There are still some quaint old streets and houses with wooden balconies in this city. 

The large Freedom Square is a good place to start with the Batonistsikhe citadel on one side, recently renovated including the palace of King Erekle II built in the Persian style in the 1750s, two churches, a pantheon, the last resting place of many local notables, and royal baths. By the east gate of the citadel is an equestrian statue of Erekle II. I headed downhill to see the 900-year-old plane tree.

There are many wineries and vineyards in this part of Georgia and one of the more unusual ones is at Alaverdi Monastery, 18 kilometres north of Telavi. The St. George Cathedral here dates from the first half of the 11th century and is in the Alazani River valley. There have been buildings on this site since the 6th century AD. A monk called Joseph, who came from Antioch and settled in Alaverdi, when it was a pagan religious centre dedicated to the Moon, founded the Monastery. 

Wine making has a special significance here at the monastery as this was one of the few places in the Soviet Union where knowledge of traditional wine-making techniques was kept alive when the Soviets banned anything but industrial wine production. The monks have opened up an 11th-century cellar and are making their wines available again with the help of the Badagoni wine company. 

The reason to go to Gremi is to see the citadel, whose church is a great example of the Georgian adaptation of Persian styles of architecture with its patterned brickwork. In the citadel, not only is there the Church of Archangels Michael and Gabriel but also a three-storey castle and a bell tower, all encircled by a curtain wall. The Church of the Archangels was constructed at the behest of King Levan of Kakheti (1520–1574) in 1565 and the frescoes were completed by 1577. Today, Gremi is a village but there was a city here in the 6th Century AD and it was the capital of the Kakheti region from 1466 until 1616 when it was laid waste by Shah Abbas. The museum by the main road – the other side of the underpass from the car park – has many lovely items, including daggers from the 2nd millennium BC and ceramics from the 4th Century BC. 

Gori and the Caucasus

Stalin’s original Georgian name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili. The Russian equivalent of this is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. During his years as a revolutionary, he adopted the alias “Stalin”, and after the October Revolution, he made it his legal name, so he became Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin.

Stalin is probably the most famous person born in the country of Georgia and my next stop was at the Soviet-style town of Gori, where Stalin was born. Here, I visited the museum – it’s a shrine really and learned about his life. 

I’m sure most people know that Stalin initially began training as a priest in the Georgian Seminary before abandoning religion to become a brigand and join the new Bolshevik movement. It’s been suggested that Georgia escaped the worst horrors of Stalin’s regime because he was afraid of his conservative Christian mother. You must remember that in Stalin’s case, “escaping the horrors of Stalin’s regime” still means 80,000 Georgians were shot, 800,000 were deported, and 400,000 were killed during the period of the Great Patriotic War between 1941 and 1945. With Stalin, statistics quickly lose their impact. 

The Stalin Museum itself is really fascinating though I’d start outside with the place of his birth, which is preserved under a glass-roofed Doric temple. Lavrenti Beria, a fellow Georgian who was the longest-serving and most brutal of Stalin’s secret police chiefs, erected this temple. He wielded his most substantial influence during and after World War II. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he organised purges such as the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and officials. As soon as Stalin died, Beria was living on borrowed time. He was executed at the end of 1953, barely six months after Stalin died. 

Stalin’s private railway carriage is worth seeing too. The fittings are basic, but comfortable. The carriage has six axles to bear the weight of the armour plating.

Entering the interior of the museum is like stepping back into the days of the Soviet Union. The decor is drab, there are offices with signs for the most menial of tasks, and the lighting is subdued. Individuals may not walk around on their own. There are guided tours given by people who have answers to all your questions, even though those answers don’t come close to the truth. I declined the opportunity to buy a Stalin fridge magnet or a mug with his face on it. To be fair, in 2010 the museum opened a mock secret police cell in the basement providing limited coverage of The Terror, the resettlement of people, and the expulsions to the gulags. This is a sort of balance I suppose.

Vardzia

Vardzia is one of Georgia’s most significant sites. 

First though, if you’re coming from the Akhaltsikhe direction, stop at Khertvisi Fortress, dramatically sited on a cliff above the confluence of the Paravani and Mtkvari Rivers. It’s one of the oldest fortresses in Georgia, dating back to the 2nd Century BC, at least according to the 11th century Georgian chronicler Leonti Mroveli. He argued Khertvisi was one of the oldest Georgian towns. We have little knowledge about Khertvisi until mediaeval times. The structures that still exist today date back to the 10th-14th centuries.

After the Kingdom of Georgia disintegrated, Khertvisi belonged to the noble Jakeli family that ruled the local region known as Samtskhe-Atabegate. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, this area was part of the Ottoman Empire. Khertvisi returned to Georgia in 1828. The fortress comprises a citadel with curtain walls, towers, and a lower yard. There are two tunnels from the north leading down to the river, so the fortress could have a water supply.

Vardzia is cut into a towering cliff and was established as a stronghold against the Turkish Sultanate (the Turkish border is only 10 kilometres away) by King Georgi III in the 12th century. Vardzia was subsequently developed by his daughter, Tamar, who created a cave monastery that became a centre of Georgian culture. This network of caves above the Mtkvari (Kura) River once numbered 3000, with up to 19 tiers in some places. Much of it was destroyed after a huge earthquake in 1456 and only 550 caves have been discovered since. There are many churches, meeting halls, refectories, and wine cellars, all interconnected by tunnels and stairways. Some of these stairs are steep and not of a consistent width, so you might have to watch your step when descending. 

Akhaltsikhe

On the way to Akhaltsikhe, I headed through the forested gorges of the Borjomi Nature Reserve to Borjomi Spa, where I visited the Borjomi Mineral Water Park or Ekaterina Park. Just outside the gates on the left-hand side, the last villa has a wonderful arabesque decoration on the ceiling of its balcony, built for the Persian consul in 1892. At the height of its popularity, Borjomi used to fill over 300 million bottles annually and was one of the main mineral waters of the Soviet Union. The former bottling plant now houses a library. Nearby, under a pavilion, two ladies dispense free Borjomi water from taps into plastic cups for anyone who wants to try this salty tasting water. A cable car that takes visitors to the Sadgeri Arboretum on the plateau above the park. This arboretum covers 136 hectares and is laid out for spa visitors to go on long invigorating walks through the forest.  

Akhaltsikhe is a charming town which translates literally to ‘new fortress’. The imposing fortress dominates the skyline. Its old streets are home to a large Armenian population, and the forests just outside the town hide the beautiful 10th-century Saphara Monastery. 

The original name of the fortress in the 9th century was Lomsia, meaning “Lion” in Georgian. At the end of the 12th century, Lomsia gained the new name Akhal-tsikhe. Rabati was the name given to the trading quarter of the fortress, where mainly Jewish merchants and artisans lived. Down the years, the name Akhaltsikhe became the name of the town and the name Rabati applied to the fortress itself. 

Rabati Castle looks splendid because in May 2011 a major restoration project took place and many buildings destroyed in previous battles and sieges were rebuilt. As part of the project, the Akhmediye Mosque, the minaret, the madrasah, the Jakeli castle, the baths, the citadel, the walls of the fortress and the Orthodox Church were all renovated and / or reconstructed. The fountains play, the water runs, and the flowers bloom in the sunlight. 

I headed down the steps from the castle and decided I would like to have a very late lunch or early dinner at one restaurant that said it was open. There was no one around, so I found a menu and decided what I’d like to eat and drink. The waitress / owner came out from a backroom and stared at me. I mimed eating, and she pointed at a table – I was the only person there, so there was quite a choice – and I sat down. After she took my order, I got the impression they were surprised I was there, but the food appeared quickly and was delicious, so I can have no complaints.