Spitak
A town rebuilt from the ground up after great catastrophe

What is this place

Spitak is a small mountain town in northern Armenia, the administrative centre of the Spitak district in Lori Province, set in the valley of the Pambak River about 96 kilometres north of Yerevan and 22 kilometres west of the provincial capital, Vanadzor. Its name means "white" in Armenian, and to the wider world it is forever linked with the devastating earthquake of 7 December 1988, whose epicentre lay at this very town. What a visitor sees today is a Spitak rebuilt almost from nothing through the efforts of the whole country and the help of dozens of nations.

A settlement has existed in this part of the Pambak valley for a long time, but it once bore a different name: Hamamlu. The old name is usually traced to the Turkic word for "bath," and by one account it is linked to local warm springs. The modern Armenian name Spitak, meaning "white," was given to the town in 1948, and it is under this name that the place entered history.

Spitak received town status in 1960 and in 1971 became a town of republican subordination. By the 1980s it was a developed industrial centre of Soviet Armenia: it had a dairy plant founded back in 1937, a sugar refinery opened in 1947, a grain elevator, a plant producing lifting equipment, and other enterprises. The town was growing, and on the eve of the catastrophe its population was approaching twenty thousand.

On the morning of 7 December 1988, at 11:41, northern Armenia was struck by an earthquake of roughly 6.8 to 7.2 in magnitude. Spitak, lying at the very epicentre, was almost completely destroyed: a large part of the town was reduced to ruins within seconds, and thousands of residents perished. This tragedy, known as the Spitak earthquake, claimed tens of thousands of lives across the region and became one of the most terrible natural disasters in the history of Armenia. Even the rescue operation brought further losses, as aircraft delivering aid crashed and dozens of people died.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Spitak was rebuilt anew, and not on its former site but slightly to one side, on safer ground. Reconstruction was carried out by the government and the Armenian diaspora, but international solidarity also played an enormous role: help arrived from many countries, among them Switzerland, Russia, Austria, Finland, Norway, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Uzbekistan and the United Kingdom. Whole districts of houses were raised by the hands of foreign builders, and the memory of that help is still alive in the town today.

Today's Spitak is a quiet town, noticeably more spacious and green than its Soviet predecessor. The 2011 census recorded about 12,881 inhabitants, and the 2022 census gave a similar figure of around thirteen thousand people. It remains a district centre toward which the surrounding villages of the Pambak valley gravitate; life here runs to the rhythm of a small mountain town, defined by schools, a market, workshops and the agriculture of the surrounding countryside.

The town lies at an altitude of about 1,250 metres above sea level, encircled by mountains, which gives it a cool, highland climate with a long snowy winter and a short, fresh summer. The Pambak River, which gave its name to the whole valley, flows through the town and its surroundings. The combination of altitude, clean air and mountain landscape makes the area appealing to those who come to Lori for its nature.

Spitak has formed twin-town ties with several places around the world, among them Thousand Oaks in the United States, Limmen in the Netherlands and Orsha in Belarus; these links grew largely out of the very aid the town received after the earthquake. For the traveller, Spitak is interesting above all as a place of memory and as a convenient starting point for trips through northern Armenia: from here it is a short way to Vanadzor, to the wooded gorges of Lori with their medieval monasteries, and to the mountain passes leading into neighbouring Shirak.

Spitak is worth visiting to feel the character of this place, a town that survived almost total destruction and was reborn. The story of Spitak is not only the memory of the 1988 catastrophe but also a vivid account of how solidarity and perseverance can bring life back to where it seemed nothing was left.

Spitak is a small but unbreakable town of Lori: a quiet mountain valley where the memory of tragedy stands beside a new, rebuilt life.