Monument · Araks, Armavir community, Armavir
Sardarapat Memorial Complex
Sardarapat Memorial
The memorial complex at Araks village marking the Battle of Sardarapat of May 1918, entered between winged bulls of red tuff, with a bell tower and an ethnography museum at the end of an alley of eagles.
Where it is
40.0936, 43.9467
Why go
The monument commemorates the battle in which Armenian forces turned back the Turkish advance in May 1918, the month the First Republic of Armenia was declared, and the Republic Day ceremonies are held here each year. Allow time for the museum: Rafael Israelyan's windowless, castle-like building opened in 1978 and holds more than 70,000 items, from work tools, weapons and jewellery to pottery and clay, stone and metal chariot models of the 3rd–1st millennia BC, with an exhibition on the May battles of 1918. Metsamor makes a natural second stop on the same outing.
Near Sardarapat Memorial Complex
Archaeological site
Metsamor Archaeological Site and Museum
An excavated fortress-settlement on a hill beside the Metsamor river near Taronik, occupied from the Bronze Age onwards, with a site museum showing finds from the Early Bronze Age to the late Middle Ages.
21 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Fortress
Dashtadem Fortress
A walled stronghold on the southern edge of Dashtadem village, where an octagonal ring of 19th-century bastions encloses an older keep bearing an Arabic inscription of 1174 in Kufic script.
28 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Church
Saint Gayane Church
Built in 630 under Catholicos Ezr I within walking distance of Etchmiadzin Cathedral, Saint Gayane joins a three-aisled basilica to a central dome, and its arched western portico shelters the graves of senior clergy.
30 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Church
Etchmiadzin Cathedral
The mother cathedral of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Vagharshapat, built according to the chronicler Agathangelos after a vision of St Gregory the Illuminator and rebuilt in 483–484.
30 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ