Yerevan is the capital and largest city of Armenia. It is situated on the Hrazdan River, and is the administrative, cultural, and industrial center of the country. It has been the capital of Armenia since 1918 and the twelfth in the history of Armenia.

The history of Yerevan dates back to the 8th century BC, with the founding of the Urartian fortress of Erebuni in 782 BC at the western extremity of the Ararat plain. After World War I, Yerevan became the capital of the Democratic Republic of Armenia as thousands of survivors of the Armenian Genocide settled in the area. The city expanded rapidly during the 20th century when Armenia became one of the fifteen republics in the Soviet Union. In fifty years, Yerevan was transformed from a town of a few thousand residents during the first republic to the principal cultural, artistic and industrial center as well as becoming the seat of the political institutions of the country.

With the growth of the economy of the country, Yerevan has been undergoing a major transformation as construction sites have appeared all over the city since the early 2000s. Today, the appearance of new buildings, roads, restaurants, boutiques, quarters etc. have started to erase the traces of 70 years of Soviet dominance.

In 2007, the population of Yerevan was estimated to be 1,107,800 people with the agglomeration around the city regrouping 1,245,700 people (official estimation), more than 33% of the population of Armenia.

Early history

The origin of the name Yerevan is unknown. The territory of Yerevan was settled in the fourth millennium BC, fortified settlements from the Bronze Age include Shengavit, Tsitsernakaberd, Karmir Blur, Arin Berd, Karmir Berd and Berdadzor. Archaeological evidence, such as a cuneiform inscription, indicates that an Urartian military fortress called Erebuni was founded in 782 BC by the orders of King Argishti I at the site of current-day Yerevan, to serve as a fort and citadel guarding against attacks from the north Caucasus. Yerevan is thus one of the most ancient cities in the world.

Between the sixth and fourth centuries BC, Yerevan was one of the main centers of the Armenian satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire. During the height of Urartian power, irrigation canals and an artificial reservoir were built on Yerevan's territory. In 585 BC, the fortress of Teishebaini (Karmir Blur), thirty miles to the north of Yerevan, was destroyed by an alliance of Medes and the Scythians.

Due to the absence of historical data, the timespan between fourth century BC and third century AD is known as the "Yerevan Dark Ages." The first church in Yerevan, the church of St. Peter and Paul, was built in the fifth century (it was demolished in 1931 and a cinema built on its site).

Foreign (Persian and Ottoman) rule

In 658 AD, Yerevan was conquered, during the height of Arab invasions. Since then the site has been strategically important as a crossroads for the caravan routes passing between Europe and India. It has been known as "Yerevan" since at least the seventh century AD. Between the ninth and eleventh centuries, Yerevan was a secure part of the Armenian Bagratuni Kingdom, before being overrun by Seljuks. The city was seized and pillaged by Tamerlane in 1387 and subsequently became an administrative center of the Ilkhanate. Due to its strategic significance, Yerevan was constantly fought over and passed back and forth between the dominion of Persia and the Ottomans.

At the height of the Turkish-Persian wars, the city changed hands fourteen times between 1513 and 1737. In 1604, under the order of Shah Abbas I, tens of thousands of Armenians (including citizens of Yerevan) were deported to Persia. As a consequence, population became 80 percent Muslim (Persians, Turco, Kurds) and 20 percent Armenian. Muslims were either sedentary, semi-sedentary, or nomadic. Armenians lived in Erevan or the villages. The Armenians dominated the various professions and trade in the area and were of great economic significance to the Persian administration. The Ottomans, Safavids and Ilkhanids all maintained a mint in Yerevan. During the 1670s, the Frenchman Jean Chardin visited Yerevan and gave a description of the city in his Travels of Cavalier Chardin in Transcaucasia in 1672-1673. On June 7, 1679, a devastating earthquake razed the city to the ground. During the Safavid Dynasty rule, Yerevan and adjacent territories were part of the Cour Sad administrative territory. This lasted until 1828 when the region was incorporated into Russian Empire.

Foreign (Russian) rule

During the second Russian-Persian war, Yerevan was captured by Russian troops under general Ivan Paskevich on 1 October, 1827. It was formally ceded by the Persians in 1828, following the Treaty of Turkmenchay. Tsarist Russia sponsored Armenian resettlement from Persia and Turkey; by the turn of the twentieth century, Yerevan's population was over 29,000, of which 49% were Azerbaijanis (then referred to as Azerbaijani Tatars), 48% Armenians and 2% Russians. It served as the seat of the newly-formed Armenian Oblast and subsequently the Erivan Governorate.

The city began to grow economically and politically, with old buildings torn down and new buildings in European style erected in their place. In 1829, Armenian repatriates from Persia were resettled in the city and a new quarter was built. By the time of Nicholas I's visit in 1837, Yerevan had become a uyezd.

The first general plan of the city was made in 1854, during which time the women's colleges of St. Hripsime and St. Gayane were opened and the English Garden built. In 1874, Zacharia Gevorkian opened Yerevan's first printing house and in 1879 the first theatre, sited near the church of St. Peter and Paul, was established. Two years into the twentieth century, a railway line linked Yerevan with Alexandropol, Tiflis and Julfa, the same year Yerevan's first public library opened. In 1913, a telephone line with eighty subscribers became operational. The early twentieth century saw the governorship of Erivan province by Louis Joseph Jerome Napoleon (1864-1932), grandnephew of Napoleon I.

Brief independence (1917–1920)

At the start of the 20th century, Yerevan was a small town with a population of 30,000. In 1917, the Russian Empire ended with the October Revolution. In the aftermath, Armenian, Georgian and Muslim leaders of Transcaucasia united to form the Transcaucasian Federation and proclaimed Transcaucasia's secession.

The Federation, however, was short-lived and on May 28, 1918, Yerevan became the capital of the newly-independent Democratic Republic of Armenia and therefore became the center of independent Armenia. On November 29, 1920, the Bolshevik 11th Red Army occupied Yerevan during the Russian Civil War. Although nationalist forces managed to retake the city in February 1921, the city once again fell to Soviet forces on April 2, 1921.

Soviet Yerevan

Yerevan became the capital of the newly formed Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union. The Soviet era transformed the city into a modern industrial metropolis of over a million people, developed according to the prominent Armenian architect Alexander Tamanian's designs. Yerevan also became a significant scientific and cultural center.

Tamanian incorporated national traditions with contemporary urban construction. His design presented a radial-circular arrangement that overlaid the existing city. As a result, many historic buildings were demolished, including churches, mosques, the Persian fortress, baths, bazaars and caravanserais. Many of the surrounding districts around Yerevan were named after former Armenian communities that were decimated by the Ottoman Turks during the Armenian Genocide. The districts of Arabkir, Malatya-Sebastia and Nork Marash, for example, were named after the towns Arabkir, Malatya, Sebastia, and Marash, respectively. Following the end of the Second World War, German POWs were used to help in the construction of new buildings and structures, such as the Kievyan Bridge.

In 1965, during the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Yerevan was the center of a 24-hour mass anti-Soviet protest, the first such demonstration in the Soviet Union, to demand recognition of the Genocide by the Soviet authorities. In 1968, the city's 2,750th anniversary was commemorated.

Yerevan played a key role in the Armenian national democratic movement that emerged during the Gorbachev era of the 1980s. The reforms of Glasnost and Perestroika opened questions on issues such as the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, the environment, Russification, corruption, democracy, and eventually independence. At the beginning of 1988, nearly one million Yerevantsis engaged in demonstrations concerning these subjects, centered on Theater Square.

Post-USSR independence

Following the end of the Soviet Union, Yerevan became the capital of the Republic of Armenia on September 21, 1991. Maintaining supplies of gas and electricity proved difficult; constant electricity was not restored until 1996. Also in the last five years, central Yerevan has been transformed into a vast construction site, with cranes seemingly outnumbering trees. Officially, the scores of multi-storied buildings are part of large-scale urban planning projects. Roughly $1.8 billion was spent on such construction in 2006, according to the national statistical service. Prices for downtown apartments have increased by about ten times over the last decade, realtors say. However, some experts have voiced their opinions, and have asserted that many of the new edifices violate urban planning and earthquake safety requirements.

Political demonstrations still occur in Yerevan, usually as a result of disputed election results. Recently, unrest in the capital between the authorities and opposition demonstrators led by ex-President Levon Ter-Petrossian occurred after the 2008 Armenian presidential election. The events resulted in ten deaths and a subsequent 20-day state of emergency declared by President Robert Kocharian.

Museums and Libraries

Yerevan's principal museum is the National Gallery of Armenia that was constructed in 1921. It is integrated with the Armenia's History Museum. In addition to having a permanent exposition of works of painters such as Aivazovsky, Kandinsky, Chagall, Theodore Rousseau, Monticelli or Eugene Boudin, it usually hosts temporary expositions such as Yann Arthus-Bertrand in 2005 or the one organized on the occasion of the Year of Armenia in France in October 2006.

The Armenian Genocide museum is found at the foot of Tsitsernakapert and features numerous eyewitness accounts, texts and photographs from the time. It comprises a Memorial stone made of three parts, the latter of which is dedicated to the intellectual and political figures who, as the museum's site says, "raised their protest against the Genocide committed against the Armenians by the Turks. Among them there are Armin T. Wegner, Hedvig Bull, Henry Morgenthau, Franz Werfel, Johannes Lepsius, James Bryce, Anatole France, Giacomo Gorrini, Benedict XV, Fritjof Nansen, Fayez el Husseini". This place of remembrance was created by Laurenti Barseghian, the Museum's director, and Pietro Kuciukian, the founder of the "Memory is the Future" Committee for the Righteous for the Armenians. This Memorial hosts the ashes or fistfuls of earth from the tombs of the Righteous and of those non-Armenians who witnessed the genocide and tried to help the Armenians. Here, people also celebrates living characters who stand out for their pro-memory engagement.

The Matenadaran is a library-museum regrouping 17 000 ancient manuscripts and several bibles from the Middle Ages. Its archives hold a rich collection of valuable ancient Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, Hebrew, Roman and Persian manuscripts. It is located in the center of the city on Mesrop Mashdots avenue.

Next to the Hrazdan river, the Sergey Parajanov Museum that was completely renovated in 2002, has 250 works, documents and photos of the Armenian filmmaker and painter. Yerevan has several other museums like the museum of the Middle-East and the Museum of Yerevan.

Cinemas, Theatres, Opera and Concert Halls

The city of Yerevan possesses two operating cinema halls; among them the famous Moskva cinema. Most of the world's hit movies are available to watch at the same time of their release elsewhere. Most of the movies that are shown in the cinemas are Russian.

Since 2004, Moskva hosts each year the Golden Apricot international film festival. The last edition of the festival presided by Atom Egoyan was held from July 9 to July 14 2007 with the Golden Apricot going to the film Import/Export from Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl.

The Opera Theatre of Yerevan hosts the Aram Khatchaturian concert hall, the national theatre of opera and the Alexander Spendiarian ballet. The numerous theatres have permitted attendance to a multitude of various pieces and the some spectacle rooms, of which the big one Hamalir, sometimes offer some concerts even if the temperate Armenian summers allow the organization of the bulk of the concerts to be held outside.

Amusement Parks and Zoo

The Yerevan Zoo was founded in 1940. After a period of difficulty during the 1990s, the zoo is in better economic shape today. The zoo hosts elephants, eagles, bears, camels and 260 other animal species.

Waterworld is a water park in Yerevan. It has several pools, toboggans, bars and restaurants. The park used to close from October to May but construction of an indoors section called Aquatek has permitted the water park to be open all year. The indoors section has jacuzzis, pools, hammams, fitness rooms, restaurants and a hotel.

On the road to Lake Sevan, there is an amusement parc called Play City that has a bowling arena, a cinema, paint-ball, karting and video-game rooms.

Tourism

Tourism in Armenia has been developing every year and the capital city of Yerevan is one of the major tourist destinations. The city has the majority of hotels, restaurants, bars and nightclubs in the country. Zvartnots airport has also conducted renovation projects with the growing number of tourists visiting the country. Two major tourist attractions are the Opera House, the ruins of an Urartu fortress and a Roman fortress. The Armenia Marriott Hotel is situated in the heart of the city at Republic Square (also known as Hraparak).