Shirak is a high, wind-swept highland in the north-west of Armenia, lying on average at fifteen hundred metres. The winters here are long and bitter, the summer short and dry, and the land is black tuff and basalt, from which almost every house is built. This is a country of treeless plain, where the horizon is pushed to the very edge and the sky seems higher than anywhere else in the country.
The heart of the province is Gyumri, Armenia's second city, craftsmanly and stubborn. Its old quarter, Kumayri, is a place of 19th-century streets of black and red tuff, smithy yards and the Black Fortress above the city. In 1988 an earthquake nearly wiped the city off the face of the earth, but Gyumri rebuilt itself, keeping its sharp humour, its craftsmen and the churches of Surb Amenaprkich and Yot Verk on the main square.
Ancient stones are scattered across the whole province: 13th-century Marmashen above the Akhuryan gorge, the early-Christian Yereruyk basilica right by the Turkish border, the rock-cut Harichavank on the edge of a cliff. The Akhuryan River separates Armenia from Turkey and carries its waters to the Araks, and in the north, by the Georgian border, the high-mountain Lake Arpi shimmers blue — an open-air bird sanctuary.
«A Gyumri man laughs even when it's time to cry — because otherwise winter would get the better of him.»
On this page — the province's settlements (with weather on click), the main monuments, routes and chronicle. Marmashen, Yereruyk, Kumayri — each with its own time and its own character.
