Bartsrashen
The high village that refused to vanish

What is this place

Bardzrashen is an almost-deserted mountain village in Armenia's Shirak Province, sitting at about 1,700 metres near the town of Maralik. Its very name means "high village," and that altitude shaped its entire destiny.

Bardzrashen stands on the highlands of north-western Armenia, in Shirak Province, within the Ani municipality not far from the town of Maralik. It was once a busy settlement: the 1873 census recorded around 336 residents, and by 1939 the population was close to eight hundred. Today the official population of Bardzrashen is zero, a village listed as empty even though a handful of families returned after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The turning point came in September 1981, when Soviet authorities decided to demolish Bardzrashen. The reasons given were a shortage of water and the difficulty of reaching the mountain village in winter, when snow blocked the road for long stretches. Residents were resettled downhill in Maralik and Isahakyan, and the land passed to neighbouring communities. People resisted, but the village was razed.

After Armenia regained independence, some of the former inhabitants returned to their native highland to rebuild their farmsteads. Life here is still hard, and the main problem is the same as it was forty years ago: a lack of water that must be carried uphill from several kilometres away. Even so, the slopes still hold traces of a long history, including the medieval churches of Surb Poghos-Petros (Saints Peter and Paul) and Surb Astvatsatsin (Holy Mother of God), along with old khachkars and gravestones.

For the traveller, Bardzrashen is a place for quiet reflection rather than tourist bustle. It is worth the climb for the wide Shirak views, the modest stone churches, and the feeling of a village that was wiped off the map yet refused to disappear.