By Armen MuradyanLos Angeles Times

I’m a Yerevantsi and, although the city is small, and I still don’t know all of it. I pass down Abovyan on my way to work, and even now I’ll find a carved doorway, a balcony, a courtyard I had never looked at. New kitchens open faster than I can keep up. And I often cross the center on foot — it takes twenty five minutes at most I still think it’s the best way to get a feel for the true heart of the city.

The city is older than it looks: in 782 B.C. an Urartian king had it cut into stone that he had built a fortress here and named it Erebuni. That’s where Yerevan gets its name, and it makes this place a few decades older than Rome. What you walk through is young, though. In 1924 Alexander Tamanyan’s plan was approved and the city was rebuilt around what a modern capital needs, out of volcanic tuff quarried nearby — pink, rose, gold buildings shifting with the light through the day.

Travelers are only now arriving in numbers, and what they notice first is a European city with Asia sitting very close to it — nowhere more than at the local cuisine, where Armenian cooking has kept its deep traditions while picking up accents from neighboring cultures. Then they discover the museums, the city’s ancient heritage, the late evenings, the wine bars on Saryan Street. Any season you come, look for Ararat in the morning, before the air hazes over. With all that in mind, here’s a 48-hour itinerary for a wonderful getaway in Yerevan.

Day 1: Yerevan’s Pink-Tuff Architecture, Art and Wine

9:30 am: Morning Coffee at Lumen at Mashtots Ave.

(Courtesy of Lumen)

Lumen Coffee occupies what is thought to be one of Yerevan’s oldest preserved interiors — a 1930s bookstore whose carved Art Nouveau woodwork stayed hidden behind later renovations. The kitchen is better than a coffee room needs to be: breakfasts, focaccia, pasta, and cakes worth the detour like the pistachio cheesecake. Then walk down Mashtots; Republic Square is ten minutes south.

11:00 am: City Cultural Center — History Museum of Armenia

(Courtesy of History Museum of Armenia)

The History Museum of Armenia occupies the head building at the Republic Square, sharing it with the National Gallery. It holds about 400,000 objects, and every floor provides a reason to come. The wooden wagons and chariots excavated at Lchashen, on Lake Sevan, date to the 15th and 14th centuries B.C. and are among the oldest surviving wooden vehicles anywhere in the world, along with the oldest leather shoe discovered in caves of Areni. The Urartian bronzes and cuneiform came out of Erebuni and Karmir Blur, the fortresses this city grew from.

Between them, the exhibits give you something no single object can: a sense of how much has moved through the neighbors of this mountains — Urartu, Persia, Rome, Ancient and Cilician Armenia, the Soviet century — and how much of it stayed.

Afterwards, walk up Abovyan Street, past the 13th-century Katoghike chapel, to Charles Aznavour Square. A ten minute walk, it’s one of the best-looking stretches of the old center.

1:00 pm: Lunch at Lavash Restaurant

The menu at Lavash is modern Armenian built on a farm-to-table premise: brtuch, which is lavash wrapped around herbs and cheese; ghapama, a pumpkin baked with rice and dried fruit; dolma; famous khorovats — pork and lamb barbequed on mangal. Finish with pomegranate tea and the house halva. It is one of the busiest dining rooms in the city.

3:30 pm: Sergei Parajanov Museum

(Courtesy of Parajanov Museum, Yerevan )

Parajanov made The Color of Pomegranates in 1969 and was barred from filming anything else for many years that followed. What he made instead fills this house-museum: 1,768 pieces — collages of foil, lace, buttons and dried flowers, assemblages, dolls, hats, drawings, and sketches for films that were never shot. He chose the house himself and it opened in 1991. Forbidden to work, he created art that still stops you in the room.

7:30 pm: Dinner at Dalan Art Gallery

(Courtesy of Dalan Art Gallery)

You come in through the souvenir shop — modern Armenian painters upstairs, clay and carved wood below — and out into a courtyard covered by grapevines. Dalan‘s menu is Armenian home-cooking: dolma, kyufta, khorovats, lentil soup. Live jazz in the yard is performed in the warm months. Plan to stay a while: the wine menu is extensive and local, and nobody will rush your table.

Stay: Tufenkian Historic Yerevan Hotel

(Courtesy of Armen Muradyan)

Tufenkian Historic Yerevan is steps from dinner and directly across from Vernissage. The hotel is part of the Tufenkian Heritage Hotels group, founded by Armenian-American entrepreneur James Tufenkian, who helped revive Armenia’s carpet industry beginning in the 1990s. Its design draws on local materials including basalt, wool and metal, with Tufenkian carpets throughout the rooms. Downstairs, Kharpert serves Western Armenian cuisine, with a particularly strong vegetarian selection alongside meat and fish dishes. There is also a Tufenkian carpet showroom on site, should you decide the rug in your room needs a trip home with you.

Day 2: Armenian Heritage, Brandy and Contemporary Yerevan

9:00 am: Cafesjian Center for the Arts, Breakfast at the Cascade

(Courtesy of Cafesjian Center for the Arts)

The Cafesjian Center for the Arts is worth arriving early just to walk the terraces before the crowds. The morning light makes for great photos as you wind past the modern art installations on your way down.

The base of the Cascade is a line of terraces under the trees. Aperitivo opens at seven and is the spot to have breakfast: omelets, pancakes, pastries, and coffee people come for on its own. Half portions are allowed, which helps before the 572 steps ahead. Cascade Chocolateria and The Brunch Cascade are next door; August Cafeteria doesn’t open until eleven on weekdays.

11:00 am: Vernissage Market for Handmade Craftsmanship

Explore three hundred and fifty meters of open-air market along Aram and Buzand streets, which begins right across the road from where you slept. Vernissage is French for ‘the varnishing day before an exhibition opens.’ The meaning is literal: the market started in the 1980s when artists began hanging work beside the Artists’ Union. Now it features carved wood, carpets, duduks, silver cut with pomegranates, Soviet coins and badges, chess sets. You can expect to haggle and bargain, and beware: On Saturdays and Sundays the prices may double.

12:30 pm: GUM Market

(Courtesy of Armen Muradyan)

It’s time for legendary Armenian sweets and food market: mountains of dried apricots and figs, walnut sujukh hanging like candles, basturma, barrels of pickles, spice cones. Vendors hand out so many samples you may not feel like lunch.

1:30 pm: Dolmama Restaurant for Lunch

(Courtesy of Dolmama)

Dolmama was opened in 1998, in the middle of the collapse that followed the Soviet Union, by Jirair Avanian, an Armenian-American who came back home to Armenia with an art collection. The dolma is what it is named for: grape leaves rolled by hand around lamb and mountain mint, under walnut yogurt and pomegranate seeds. Order the chi kufta as well, and the Sevan trout carpaccio with plums and capers. From March to November the tables move into the courtyard, under a vine nearly two hundred years old.

3:00 pm: Matenadaran

(Courtesy of Matenadaran)

Matenadaran has the largest collection of Armenian and regional ancient manuscripts anywhere, about 23,000 total, in a basalt building at the head of Mashtots Avenue. Find the Homiliary of Mush from 1202 — some 600 calfskins weighing close to 70 pounds. In 1915, two women fleeing Mush cut it in half to carry it, and both halves eventually reached this room. This is a place where the written word survived exile, genocide, and centuries of upheaval to be preserved for anyone who walks in.

4:30 pm: Ararat Brandy Museum and Tasting

(Courtesy of Yerevan Brandy Company)

Ararat brandy museum is a working cellar: you pass the barrels of century-old Armenian oak on your way to the tasting room. In the deepest room that the guides call Paradise, there are bottles going back to 1902 and casks set aside for visiting heads of state and figures from the arts and humanities.

21:45: A nightcap at The Bird Cage

On Abovyan street, up a flight of stairs from Bar Phoenīx, where Armenian brandy comes twelve different ways, is a small room that has committed itself entirely to birds. Every drink is named for one that lives here and mixed from what grows where it nests — the Lapwing, the Loxia, the Oriole. Order the Lapwing first, then take it out to the balcony over Abovyan. It runs until late evening, and manages to be both a calm room and a serious bar.

Stay: Scenic Views at The Alexander

(Courtesy of the Alexander)

The Alexander opened in 2019 behind a retained 18th-century façade. The highlight of finishing here is the eleventh floor with its indoor pool and Mt. Ararat in the window. Swim early in the morning as soon as you wake up, when the air is still clear and the mountain is easily visible. The Italian restaurant on the top floor has the same stunning mountain view from its terrace.