Ashotsk
Highland village on the Ashotsk plateau

What is this place

Ashotsk is a village in the north of Armenia's Shirak Province and the centre of the Ashotsk district, set at almost two thousand metres in the middle of the windswept Ashotsk plateau. It is one of the highest and coldest inhabited spots in the country.

Ashotsk spreads across the centre of the Ashotsk plateau at around 1,990 metres, on a wide rolling upland close to the Georgian border, along the road that links Akhalkalaki with Gyumri. Winters here are long and harsh, with frosts dropping below minus forty degrees, which is why the plateau is half-jokingly called the North Pole of the Armenian highlands. Summers are short and cool, and a stand of firs planted west of the village has grown over the years into a small forest, a rare sight on these open high plains.

The village was founded in 1825 by Armenian settlers from Western Armenia, people who came from Mush and Alashkert. Over a century and a half Ashotsk changed its name several times: it was known as Kzyl-Koch until 1938, then became Verin Gukasyan and Gukasyan, and the historic name Ashotsk was restored in 1992. For a long time it served as the centre of the district that bears its name, and that administrative weight still shapes its daily life.

Life on the plateau has always rested on the land and on livestock: farming and animal husbandry remain the main occupations, and herds graze the local black-earth soils and meadows. Among the markers of this Armenian village are a memorial spring beside the church and old ram-shaped tombstones and khachkars that recall the area's long traditions. After the devastating earthquake of 1988, the Redemptoris Mater hospital opened in Ashotsk as a gift from Pope John Paul II to the Armenian people, a notable chapter in the village's recent history.