Goris

Goris sits in a bowl in Syunik surrounded by columns and cones of eroded volcanic tuff, and it is unusual among Armenian towns for having been laid out to a plan: a Russian-era grid of straight streets and two-storey stone houses with balconies and walled gardens, drawn up in the 1870s. Above the town, in the Old Goris quarter, the rock is honeycombed with dwellings and stores cut by hand, used into the twentieth century. The setting does most of the work.

History

The area has been settled since the Stone Age, and a land called Guria or Goriaya in an inscription of the Urartian king Rusa I, who reigned from 735 to 713 BC, may be Goris; in the Middle Ages the village of Kores stood on the left bank of the Goris river, named in Stepanos Orbelian's 13th-century history of Syunik. Syunik suffered Seljuk, Mongol and Turkmen invasions from the 12th to the 15th century, passed to Safavid Persia in the 16th, was the centre of David Bek's Armenian rising early in the 18th, and became Russian under the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813. The Russian authorities founded the new town, then called Gerusy, in 1870 as the seat of the Zangezur district, and in 1876 its building to a plan by a German architect was completed beside old Kores, followed by a covered market, schools, factories and a printing house (Wikipedia, Goris).

What to look for

• The rock pyramids - eroded tuff columns and cones ringing the town.
• The cave quarter - hand-cut dwellings and stores in the cliffs above Old Goris.
• The 1870s grid - straight streets of two-storey stone houses with carved balconies.
• The bowl - the town sitting in a hollow with cliffs on three sides.

When to go

May to October is the season; Syunik winters are cold and snowy and the mountain roads difficult. Autumn colour in the valley is the best of the year. Mornings give the best light on the pyramids.

Before you go

The town itself is small and the caves take an hour. Accommodation is guesthouse level. The road from Yerevan is long and crosses several passes.

Nearby

Old Khndzoresk is a short drive east, and Tatev is southwest across the gorge.

Key facts