A gorge town with seven medieval churches in a 5km radius and the best tolma in Armenia — barely 20 minutes from Yerevan
Ashtarak is a small town just 25km northwest of Yerevan on the Kasagh River, notable for a remarkable concentration of early Christian churches — seven medieval churches dating from the 5th–13th centuries within a short walking distance of the town centre, several of them hanging directly above the deep basalt gorge of the Kasagh. The town is also known throughout Armenia for its particular local preparation of tolma (stuffed grape leaves with meat), and the stretch of roadside restaurants along the main road from Yerevan to Gyumri that pass through Ashtarak has been making it a lunch-stop de…
The Kasagh River gorge running through Ashtarak was inhabited since at least the Bronze Age. The town and its surrounding churches were part of the Aragatsotn province of historic Armenia, under Bagratid and then Pahlavuni control in the medieval period. The Church of Tsiranavor (5th century) is one of the earliest surviving Christian buildings in Armenia — a simple single-nave structure of particular historical importance because it predates the development of the cross-dome church type that became standard in Armenian architecture. The legend of three sisters (Mariam, Sona, and Tagush) who…