🇦🇲 Armenia
Yerevan
Yerevan (Երևան; population 1.09 million; the capital and largest city of Armenia (Հայաստան); at 900-1,300 m altitude in the Ararat Valley of the Armenian Highland, on the left bank of the Hrazdan River where the valley opens toward the Ararat Plain; 40 km north of the Turkish border; with the direct line-of-sight view across the Ararat Plain to Mount Ararat (Masis — 5,137 m, the dominant volcano of the Armenian Highland, located in Turkey since the 1921 Treaty of Kars) that makes Yerevan one of the most visually dramatic capitals in the world: the snow-capped summit visible above the city roofline on clear days (approximately 120 days per year) is the national symbol of Armenia despite being politically in Turkey) is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world: the Erebuni fortress (Էրեբունի — built 782 BCE by the Urartu king Argishti I on the Arin Berd hill southeast of the modern city; the city name Yerevan derives from the Urartian fortress name Erebuni through the Armenian linguistic evolution Erebuni → Erevuni → Erevan → Yerevan) making Yerevan approximately 2,800 years old — older than Rome (traditionally 753 BCE), older than Carthage (traditionally 814 BCE), contemporary with the founding of the city of Troy (Hisarlik) in the Bronze Age). Yerevan is known as the "Pink City" (because the most common building material is the pink-hued tuff (volcanic tufa) quarried from the Armenian volcanic plateau: the Artik tuff (the pink-beige volcanic stone from the Artik quarry near Gyumri) and the Ani tuff (the darker pink stone from the Shirak region) give the city the warm rose-toned appearance that distinguishes it from all other post-Soviet capitals) and as the capital city with the most visible reminder of a genocide: the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial (the Genocide memorial and museum on the hilltop above the Hrazdan River gorge, 3 km northwest of the Republic Square — the complex built in 1967 to commemorate the 1.5 million Armenians murdered by the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish government in 1915-1923).