Day 6 Arch Criminality? Old for New in Yerevan. Discuss.

---

Yerevan is a city filled with arches. Throughout the façades of the buildings of Republic Square, the same Roman simple arch is see again and again in its architecture.

e.g. The façade of the National Museum is a set of arches, and the new building attached designed for the museum’s collection features a modernistic Roman arch.

And theme continues around the Square, eg. a new Marriott hotel boasts fine stone facing and beautiful carving around ....... arches.

We visited the formerly mentioned National Museum today ....... to find it closed on a Monday. So we adopted a new plan and continued east on to Buzand Street. Here was a ‘local modernist’ building from Soviet times, the 3rd Government Building, made up of very stylish tall arches, reminiscent of many modern arched façades...... a touch of Bauhaus. This was built in 1980, designed by Vardan Housyan the architect.

More generally, across the whole of the Yerevan centre, there are many brand new edifices with a big central archway giving access to a central courtyard. eg. The Government Building for Foreign Affairs. It reminds me of a Budapest building near Kiraly Utca Street where a road passes through an appartement block.

And making a similar visual statement, a new Bank of Armenia building incorporates a giant feature window with an inset bronze tree.



The Khachkars that we found in front of Vardan Housyan’s arches are a link to the theme which I’ll pick up later. Khachkars are memorial stones intricately carved with crosses, birds, knot designs and other motifs. The examples we saw were standing up to 2m high on mounts upon grassed lawns, all relatively new but reflecting older examples. Traditionally they would be used for prayer and remembrance.

On Gothland, a Swedish island in the Baltic, we saw very similar ‘Rune stones’ which exist in Scandinavia and Shetland and fulfil the same function.



Beyond this lies the Vernissage Market full of wooden gifts: dolls, chess sets, spinning tops and duduks. Ooh....... And silver jewellery, tapestry, paintings, ceramics and more, aimed at tourist trade but with an emphasis up natural materials i.e. not all tat.



After lunch we set off to find Khachkar stone masons on Aram Street. And they are the link to the subject of further new buildings (whether arched or otherwise).

All of the area between Abovyan Street and Teryan Street is old housing stock. We took in the scope of the history as we traced a path along Pavstovs Buzand Street.

The north side was bounded by empty, roofless, broken old buildings with trees growing through what would have been floors. Earthquake damaged property? Or real estate bought and allowed to rot? On the south side is huge new building with Gastrobars at the base of each block creating an opulent café society ambience.

We turned the corner to see Villa Delenda, a famous building and still a BnB. But an information board outside notes that it is threatened and will be likely to be razed to the ground. There are a number of handsome 19C buildings here that have survived the Soviet bulldozer and the 21C oligarchs’ grand plans.

Such historical landmarks give weight and value to a city and demands the preservation of such examples...... in Gdańsk and Warsaw a deal of buildings completely destroyed in war have been painstakingly rebuilt in order to preserve the feel and traditional look of the towns.

We walk around a further corner to look at the rear of the tumbledown properties where we find the stone masons in a run down back yard. Two men work with chisels and points executing beautiful commissions in red sandstone.



The end of our walk out was to the Saryan Art gallery, devoted to the work of one artist: Martiros Saryan. He was an Armenian painter, the founder of the modern Armenian national school of painting. To be honest, we chose this because it is open on a Monday, and because his work is defined by its bright colours, our sort of thing. . But a sign saying ‘the light was to poor to open’ (see picture of full sun as we read the notice) squashed our hopes of seeing his work.



Evening meal inside the impressive Vostan restaurant. A number of timbered balconies surround an internal courtyard. Very impressive. Lovely flatbreads.



Croatia have just beaten Armenia in Yerevan: 0:1.

Off home to prepare ourselves for the start of our tour of Armenia

---