HISTORICAL BUILDINGS

7th-19th centuries

State index: 1.6.76

Restored in 16th, 17th, and 19th centuries

The Yerevan Fortress stood in the southwestern part of the city center, on the high left bank of the Hrazdan River. The fortress is first mentioned in 7th-century records concerning Arab invasions. Historian Sebeos reports that the Arabs besieged the fortress but were unable to capture it. The fortress is subsequently referenced by various Armenian and foreign authors.

During the late Middle Ages, Yerevan Fortress served as a central stronghold in the Ararat region and was a key military fortification. In the 15th century, it became part of the Turkmen Aq Qoyunlu (“White Sheep”) state. In 1502, Shah Ismail, the founder of Safavid Persia, captured it.

During the two centuries of Turkish-Persian wars from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the fortress changed hands 14 times. It experienced numerous destructions and reconstructions, leading to significant alterations. Under Persian rule, it housed Tokhman Khan's palace and gardens. In 1583, the Turks captured the fortress, and Ottoman commander Farhad Pasha reconstructed the palace surroundings and fortified the walls in just 45 days. The Turks demolished Armenian churches and repurposed the stones for construction.

In 1604, during Shah Abbas I's reign, the Persians regained control of the fortress and rebuilt it. The 1639 treaty between Ottoman Turkey and Safavid Persia assigned Eastern Armenia to Persia and Western Armenia to Turkey. Yerevan then became the administrative center of the Persian khanate, with the fortress serving as the khan's (sardar's) residence until the early 19th century, when Persian rule in Transcaucasia ended.

The 1679 earthquake severely damaged Yerevan Fortress. Persian Sardar Zal Khan restored it. In 1724, the Turks recaptured it. The Persians regained control of the city and fortress in 1735 under Nader Shah. The fortress underwent its final fortification and improvement in the 19th century under the last Persian Sardar Hussein Qoli Khan, with help from French and English military experts.

No records remain about the fortress's earliest structure. The most notable building from the Persian rule period is the sardar's palace. Amir-Guna Khan (1604-1625) carried out renovations, and Zal Khan rebuilt it after the devastating earthquake of 1679. Yerevan Sardar Mahmad Khan completed the palace in the 1790s, adding a mirror-decorated hall (designed by architect Mirza Jafar) and a “paradise-like” garden. The palace, measuring 35 by 15 meters, was constructed with stone and lime mortar, while other buildings used stone and raw bricks.

The palace area was transformed into a citadel with walls featuring eight towers and a mosque. The exterior was reinforced with 43 additional towers. In 1603, a 355.5-meter-long wall was built to the south of the fortress. The fortress had two entrances: Shirvani (northern) and Tavrizi (southern), and an underground passage connected it to the Hrazdan River.

In 1725, Turkish Rajab Pasha built the fortress’s main mosque.

During the two Russo-Persian wars (1804-1813 and 1826-1828), Russian troops besieged Yerevan Fortress three times (1804, 1808, 1827). Only on October 1, 1827, did General Ivan Paskevich's forces, with Armenian help, capture the fortress. They issued a special medal to commemorate the capture, awarding it to thousands of participants.

The February 10, 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay permanently annexed the fortress (and Transcaucasia) to the Russian Empire.

Under Russian rule, Yerevan Fortress retained its significance as a strategic border fortification, a garrison at a major road junction, and the seat of local authorities and administrative center. From 1828 to 1840, it housed the governor of the Armenian region; from 1840 to 1850, it served as the headquarters for the Yerevan district chief of the Georgian-Imereti province; and from 1850 to 1864, it was the residence of the Yerevan provincial governor.

In October 1827, Russian officers staged Alexander Griboyedov’s play “Woe from Wit” in the mirror hall of the sardar’s palace, with the author in attendance. A plaque on the western facade of the “Ararat” trust’s cellars, constructed on the palace site during the Soviet era, commemorates this event.

In 1827, the Russians surveyed Yerevan Fortress, which had a rectangular layout measuring 790 by 850 meters, covering approximately 7 hectares. The total length of the fortress walls was 4.5 kilometers.

In 1837, ten years after the fortress was captured, Tsar Nicholas I stayed in the Sardar's Palace during his visit to Armenia and left an inscription on the wall of the mirror hall.

From the second half of the 19th century, Yerevan Fortress gradually lost its strategic importance. The tsarist government disbanded it in 1864, relocating the fortress garrison to the newly constructed Kanaker barracks and converting the area into a residential district.

Starting in the 1880s, city authorities began demolishing the fortifications and dilapidated buildings, including the Sardar's Palace. They reconfigured the internal layout, established new streets, and integrated the fortress area into the rest of the city.

In 1877, Nerses Tairian, a well-known Yerevan merchant and benefactor, began wine production on land he purchased in the former fortress area. In 1887, he started cognac production, which quickly became an industry leader. In 1887, the famous Armenian marine painter Hovhannes Aivazovsky, Tairian's relative, financially supported the factory building's construction. In 1899, Tairian leased the factory to the Russian commercial and industrial leader “Nikolai Shustov and Sons” company, which bought and expanded it a year later, creating a large industrial complex. In 1920, the government nationalized the complex, later forming the “Ararat” trust, a wine industry association complex. They built the trust's cellars on the Sardar's Palace site in two phases: in 1937 (architects Rafael Israelyan and Gevorg Kochar) and in 1961 (architect Rafael Israelyan, sculptor Ara Harutyunyan). The building resembles a fortress wall rising on the Hrazdan Gorge cliffs, reminiscent of Yerevan's once-formidable fortress.

During the Soviet era, the capital regiment occupied part of the fortress area, and residential construction took place. In 2004, Glendale Hills company built a new residential district called “Yerevan Fortress” in the ravine area.

Today, only the abandoned buildings of the capital regiment's barracks complex (19th-20th centuries) and a small section of the Sardar's (Abbas-Mirza) Mosque (early 19th century) remain from Yerevan's once-famous fortress.

“Scientific Research Centre of Historical and Cultural Heritage” SNCO

Yerevan Municipality