Aygabats
A quiet village near Gyumri

What is this place

Aygabats is a small Armenian village in Shirak Province, just a few kilometres south of Gyumri. Life here is unhurried: ploughed fields, livestock, and a village church at around 1,600 metres above sea level.

Aygabats sits in the Akhuryan Municipality of Shirak Province, in northwestern Armenia, about 9 kilometres south of the provincial centre Gyumri. It is a typical village of the Shirak plateau: low stone houses, kitchen gardens, fields spreading out around them and a wide sky overhead. At roughly 1,600 metres the climate is harsh, with sunny, dry summers and long snowy winters that local people have long since learned to live with.

As in many Shirak villages, the life of Aygabats rests on farming and cattle-breeding. A few hundred residents work the stony but fertile land of the Akhuryan river valley. Until 1946 the village bore a different name of Turkic origin; its present Armenian name, Aygabats, took hold during the Soviet years.

The village church is its most visible landmark, standing out among the low buildings. Aygabats lies off the usual tourist routes, and people come here more for the quiet and an honest glimpse of rural Shirak than for headline sights. The neighbouring villages of Arevik and Nor Akhuryan are close by, while Gyumri, with its museums and architecture, is about half an hour away.