Artik
A tuff town at the north-western foot of Mount Aragats

What is this place

Artik is a town in north-western Armenia, in Shirak Province, spread across the Shirak Basin at the north-western foot of Mount Aragats, roughly 105 kilometres from Yerevan. Sitting at about 1,859 metres, it is one of the best-known centres of Armenian tuff quarrying, a place that grew from an old village into an industrial town and is today a quiet district town of Shirak with a population of around twenty thousand.

Although registries often list Artik as an ordinary settlement, it is in fact a fully fledged town. It received town status in 1945, and the status of an urban-type settlement as early as 1 October 1938; the 2011 census recorded 19,543 inhabitants here. So this is not a village but a small yet genuine town, with its own industrial history, residential quarters and churches in the centre.

The name first appears in Armenian epigraphic inscriptions of the 11th century in the form Hardik. It is usually traced to Armenian roots meaning to strike or beat and a mountain slope, that is, a place cut or carved into the hillside. Over time the initial h fell away, and the forms Ardik and Artik took hold, neatly capturing the essence of the place: a town literally hewn into the stony slopes at the foot of Aragats.

The history of these lands reaches back to the early Middle Ages: tradition links them to the Armenian noble house of the Kamsarakans and to the district of Shirak in the Ayrarat province of Greater Armenia. Every wave of Armenian history rolled through Shirak, from the Persian-era marzpanate and the Bagratid kingdom of Ani to the rule of the Zakarians under Georgian and then Mongol overlordship, the devastations of the late Middle Ages and the deportations under Shah Abbas. The modern population took shape in the 19th century, when, after the region passed to the Russian Empire, Armenian families from Kars and Kaghizman resettled here; the 1897 census counted about 2,950 inhabitants in the settlement itself, almost entirely Armenian.

What Artik is most famous for is tuff. A large deposit of volcanic tuff, the celebrated Artik tuff, lies in the surroundings of the town, in places just centimetres beneath the soil surface, and there are significant reserves of basalt nearby as well. It is tuff that built many of the buildings of Armenia's cities, and the pinkish-cream Artik stone has become one of the hallmarks of the national architecture. In the Soviet years a railway branch of the Maralik to Artik to Gyumri line was laid to carry this raw material out from the neighbouring quarries, and goods moved along it actively; today the branch is disused, but the memory of the stone-cutting past still defines the face of the town.

For all its industrial youth, Artik preserves a rare wealth of ancient monuments. Within the town and its centre stand several churches at once: the 7th-century church of Surb Gevorg, the church of Surb Stepanos of the same century, and the ruins of an early-medieval Surb Astvatsatsin that tradition dates to the 4th century and that is revered as a folk chapel. These small but ancient structures turn a walk through Artik into a journey across a millennium and a half of Armenian architecture.

The surroundings of the town are richer still. On the grassy slopes rising above Artik stands Lmbatavank, an elegant cross-domed church of Surb Stepanos and one of the gems of early-medieval Armenian architecture. And just three to four kilometres away, in the village of Arich, lies Harichavank, one of the largest monasteries in Armenia, a complex of the 5th to 13th centuries with the remains of fortress walls and a working theological school. Together they make the area around Artik a true reserve of medieval stone.

Today Artik lives the unhurried life of a district town: stone-working and the processing of tuff, modest trade, gardening and farming on the high upland soils of Shirak. The cool highland climate, the open views of the snowy summit of Aragats and the quiet of the stone quarters give the town a restrained charm all its own.

For anyone who finds themselves in this part of the country, Artik is worth visiting for a combination hard to find anywhere else: ancient churches right within the town, the famous tuff slopes, the graceful Lmbatavank above the town and the majestic Harichavank next door, all against the backdrop of Aragats, at the very source of Armenian stonework.

Artik is a small Armenian town where the craft of stone and ancient churches come together at the foot of Aragats into one quiet but deeply Armenian landscape.