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Fortress · Gyumri, Gyumri, Shirak

Black Fortress

Սև բերդ · Sev Berd

A round fortress of black tuff on a hill above Gyumri, built in the 19th century when the city was under Russian imperial rule and used over time as military barracks and a prison.

Where it is

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40.7822, 43.8253

Why go

What you see today is one restored piece of a much larger fortification. The complex once held barracks, ammunition and food stores and a three-storey hospital; of all that, only the Black Fortress tower has been restored, in a project supported by the Balasanyan family in 2013–2016. The circular wall of hewn black and red tuff has entrance openings at its base and window-shaped embrasures for cannon. Go for the architecture and the military history, and pair it with the historic churches of Vardanants Square in the city centre.

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City

Gyumri

Gyumri is Armenia's second city and its most architecturally distinctive, built from black and red volcanic tuff in a nineteenth-century merchant style that survives across more than a thousand buildings in the protected Kumayri district. It has a strong independent cultural identity, a reputation for humour and craft that Armenians take seriously, and a train link from Yerevan that makes it one of the easiest places in the country to reach without a car.

Near Black Fortress