Armenia's wild south — copper mountains and Silk Road monasteries at the Iranian border
Kapan is the main town of Syunik Province, Armenia's southernmost and most geographically dramatic region — a narrow corridor of mountains and river gorges squeezed between Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan exclave on the west and the Iranian border to the south. The town sits in a deep canyon of the Voghji River, hemmed in by copper-bearing mountains that have been mined since antiquity. It is the gateway to the Tatev Monastery and the Wings of Tatev cable car (5.7km, world's longest reversible aerial tramway), and to the extraordinary Zorats Karer (Carahunge) prehistoric stone circle — Armenia's own…
Syunik has been one of Armenia's most contested southern provinces throughout history — the buffer zone between successive Persian, Arab, Seljuk, and Mongol empires and a frequent battleground. Kapan itself was a significant copper-mining town under Soviet rule (the Kajaran copper-molybdenum mine nearby remains one of the largest in the world). The region's isolation — it was accessible from the rest of Armenia only through Azerbaijani territory until the Nakhchivan corridor was created by Soviet cartography — has preserved both its distinct culture and considerable untouched wilderness.