Armenian fruits are very sweet and juicy thanks to the unique natural conditions in Armenia, hot sun and spring water from the mountains.

Apricots, plums, peaches from Armenia contribute to the rich flavor of Arcolad as much as the top-quality Belgian chocolate, well known for its great taste in the whole world. Half of the walnut gives a crunchy and nutty touch.

Besides fruit-nut chocolates Arcolad produces plain chocolate and filled chocolate with a variety of creams – Cointreau cream, champagne and coffee cream.

Here are some photos fro the production – sorry didn’t have my camera at hand, had to take pics with my iphone….

Apricot and walnut ready to be covered with chocolate (click to enlarge)
btw, the walnut is fixed on the fruit with chocolate too, which is also made by hand!

Covering with chocolate (click to enlarge)

Yerevanians in national costumes, 1916

Bazaar square, 1916

Bridge over Getap river, 1930

Caravanserai and St.Grigor Enlightener Cathedral (blown up in 1939), 1930

Workers rally near Nikolai Cathedral (blown up sometime by 1931), 1925

Old Yerevan building style, wooden balconies and stairs

A boy selling water, 1930

Sayat Nova Avenue, 1923

Laying tramway track on Abovyan Str., 1928

Amiryan Street

Armenian Brandy Factory, 1930

Opera House construction, 1929

Central Square, 1926

Sources: merong.com, iatp.am

According to the publishers, Yerevan magazine aims at attracting an ethnically varied readership that has an appetite for entertainment, thoughtful commentary, insightful features, and tasteful advertising that is pleasing to the eye.

YEREVAN magazine is much more than a publication. It serves as a large cultural project which focuses on preserving and displaying pages of Armenian history and presenting to the world the many representations of what it means to be an Armenian. It is a project that brings Armenian diaspora together.

The flights will be opened by a new air-company Festa Tour Avia in partnership with the Italian MyAir. The ticket price is expected to be around 475 Euro. The flights will initially be only weekly, however if the new direction is successful and there’s more demand, the partners will consider the possibility of opening more flights to other Italian cities in future. According to Festa Tour, the expected number of passengers till the end of the tourist season this year in the direction Venice – Yerevan is around 4,000 people.

The number of leisure tourists from Italy to Armenia is increasing every year and has grown 41% over the past 3 years, compared to the overall 11% growth of the leisure tourists to Armenia.

The first Armenian jazz orchestra was officially formed in Armenia in 1938 under the direction of Artemi Ayvazian. It was the first official state jazz orchestra in the Soviet republics (second after Russia) and was the first Soviet jazz band that visited USA and became known there. 

The first place in the city with life jazz music, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, where jazz was subject to strict censorship, was restaurant “Poplavok”. Its art director was Levon Malkhasian, a so-called “Godfather of the Armenian jazz”. Levon Malkhasian, or simply Malkhas, organised in 1998 the first International Yerevan Jazz Festival, where jazz bands from all over the world played their music.  In 2000 one of the participants on the Festival was Chick Corea and his “Origin” band. Unfortunately the Festival does not take place every year.

Last year, 2008, the 70th anniversary of the Armenian jazz was celebrated with numerous events related to this music genre, so beloved by Armenians. What makes Armenian jazz unique is inclusion of the elements of traditional Armenian music.

Now, the most popular jazz bands in Yerevan are ”Time Report”, “Katuner”, “Chiko & Friends”, “Art Voices” and “Armenian Navy Band”. There are several jazz clubs, the most popular of which is ”Malkhas”, a cult jazz club, where you can some evenings listen to maestro Levon Malkhasian.

Malkhas’s Jazz Club is a bar and restaurant with live jazz music.
Address: 52/1 Pushkin Street, close to Mashtots Street, in the Opera Square area.
Phone: (+374-10) 53-17-78; 53-53-50

Malkhas playing Nocturne by Arno Babajanian

Malkhas jamming in “Malkhas” club

LOVE SONG

Thy face is like a moon that shines on earth,
Like a thick night thy clustering tresses be; 
Apples of paradise thy temples are,
And thy deep eyes were lent thee by the sea.
Thou hast arched brows and dark, dark eyes, my love;
Peerless art thou among earth’s countless girls.
Thine eyelashes are arrows to my heart;
Thy mouth is a moist tulip, full of pearls.

Nahapet Kuchak (date of birth is unknown, date of death is supposedly 1592) is the Armenian medieval poet. According to the legend (his biographic data is not well-founded) he was born in the village of Kharakkonis, near Lake Van (now in Turkey).
Kuchak wrote ayrens, poems consisted of quatrains, every line of which has 15 syllables and is divided by caesurato 7 and 8 syllables. Kuchak brought this ancient Armenian poem style to perfection. Most of his poems are dedicated to love, however, the poet saw also sufferings of the people, social inequality and grieved about Armenian exiles (“Ayrens of Wandering”), had phylosophical judgements about events and people’s destiny (“Ayrens of Reflection”)

Nahapet Kuchak’s grave near Lake Van is now the place of pilgrimage.

(Translation source: www.armenianhouse.org)

The Armenian art of manuscript illumination survived 14 centuries, from the V^th till the XIX^th century. Starting from the V^th century, after the creation of the Armenian alphabet by Mesrop Mashtots in 405, Armenia experiences the flowering of literature, both translated and original. The boom was soon reflected in the art of the miniature.

Many manuscripts, especially those dated back to the early period, did not survive till our time. During the centuries Armenia was often a hostility arena. The country was suffering from the armies of foreign invaders and was subject to violent devastation. All these lead to the destruction of the ancient Armenian literary monuments, among which there were many magnificently illuminated codices. However the people that always had a deep love and respect to a book, selflessly strove to preserve its spiritual values. In difficult times of foreign occupations refugees, escaping from enemies, carried books with them as the most precious belonging or dug big and heavy volumes under the ground to find them again when they were back. Book was cherished, bought out for a lot of money, people tried to return It to the temple where It belonged.

Most of the illuminated manuscripts that survived till nowadays have the spiritual meaning. The reasons for that are the close relationship between medieval art and religion and a very protective attitude towards the sacred manuscripts.

Miniature was painted with Kalam, a sharpened reed stick, or with an “eternal” pen which had a bulge for ink storage. To make a sketch, the artist used ruler and pair of compasses and marked the initial outline with cinnabar or ochre. Then he covered certain parts of the drawing with gouache. Paints were made out of herbs, minerals (yellow, red, brown), colored soil, metal oxides (blue, green) or imported (lapis lazuli). The famous purple was made out of worm (vortan karmir). It gave a lot of other tints as well. Vegetable glue (for gouache) or sometimes an egg (for tempera) were used as a binding agent. Gold-leaves was used in miniatures of the XII^th century. Books were given leather covers, often decorated with precious golden, silver or sometimes ivory frameworks. These frameworks almost did not survive till our times due to their pure material value.

In the VII^th century Armenia was occupied by Arabs, who subdued also other countries of the Middle East: Iran, Middle Asia, Caucasus, rich provinces of Byzantine Empire – Syria, Palestine, Egypt – they seized Northern Africa and a part of Spain. Many early Armenian codices did not survive the times of the Arab sway as well as the times of winning back the freedom from the Arabs.

The post-Arabic period is the time of the rise and flourishing of the Syuniq kingdom, one of the largest provinces of the historical Armenia. Liberation from the Arab yoke and the political independence attained by a number of Armenian feudal lords brought about long years of peace and favored the economic and cultural revival of the country. The monastery of Tatev became the center of this new life in the country. Those times the foundation for the famous Tatev school of miniature was laid down.

In the 40′s of the XIII century, Armenia was subjected to other raids; this time the Mongols invaded the country. The cruel Mongolian yoke, lasting more than a hundred years, caused tremendous damage to the prospering towns and the developed agriculture. 

During this widespread decline in Armenia, Syuniq was one of those regions enjoying relatively favorable conditions. The advantageous position of Syuniq was conditioned by the clever diplomacy of the noble families, the Orbelians and the Proshians. Beginning from the middle of the XIII^th century, the Orbelians managed to improve their position in Syuniq, secure privileges and ensure peace in that region for some decades. While a wave of migration swept over the various regions of Armenia, it was quite the contrary in Syuniq. Refugees from other regions, robbed and plundered, moved to Syuniq in the hope of safety. 

All that, in turn, created favorable conditions for the development of culture. During the XIII – XIV centuries, the creative activities of many skilled architects, sculptors, talented poets and painters unfolded in the cultural centers of Syuniq.

Overall, fortunately, a large number of Armenian manuscripts are preserved, nearly 30,000, dating from the IX^th to the XIX^th centuries, and produced in every region inhabited by Armenians. 

The manuscripts and the works of art they contain are preserved in public museums and libraries, the most important of which are the Matenadaran in Erevan (11,000 whole manuscripts), the Library of the Mekhitarist Brotherhood at San Lazzaro, Venice (4,000), Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem (4,000), the Library of the Mekhitarist Brotherhood in Vienna (1,200), the Armenian Catholic Monastery of Bzummar in Lebanon (1,000), the Armenian Monastery at New Julfa, Isfahan (1,000) and important collections of fewer than 1,000 manuscripts are kept at the Catholicossate of Etchmiadzin, the Oriental Institute, Leningrad, the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Bodleian Library, Oxford, the British Library, London, the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, the Catholicossate of Cilicia, Antelias, University of California, Los Angeles, and the Vatican Library. Hundreds of other libraries have small, but artistically very important, collections, for instance the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, the Pierpoint Morgan Museum in New York, the Walters Gallery in Baltimore, and the John Rylands Library in Manchester.

Unfortunately, YouTube has decreased the quality of images (((.
The better quality you can find on the site of the travel agency, that organizes trips to Aragats

All Armenian cultural and religious monuments that are located far from main roads of Turkey are not being destroyed, but used as habitations and cattlesheds. According to Samvel Karapetyan, the chairman of the “Era” humane society and historian, the church of St.Bartholomew in Turkey, turned into a military base, can be an example of such attitude. Approaching and taking pictures of this church is obviously prohibited. To the North of the Ani town, the ancient capital of Armenia, situated now on the Turkish territory, Armenian monuments are being slowly destroyed by Turkish shepherds without any attention paid by the government to safeguarding of the antiquities.

In contrast to Turkey, Iran treats Armenian heritage differently. Iran is the only country bordering Armenia which keeps Armenian monuments under the government protection. Not so long ago a brochure listing locations of most of the Armenian churches in Iran (exactly 400 churches) was issued in Iran. It says that “the nation that creates culture is able to respect culture of another nation”.  

UNESCO intends to take over the protection of the Armenian churches and some other architectural structures, including St.Fadeus and St.Stepanos monasteries and “Tsor-Tsora” church. The president of Iran took personal care of including St.Fadeus monastery in the list of UNESCO protected monuments.

Mr.Karapetyan reminded that historical monuments located on the territories adjacent to the Mountainous Karabakh are in a very poor condition, as well as in Armenia. Armenia suggested to include the Noravank complex into the UNESCO list. However the UNESCO committee failed to visit Noravank churches – a cafe on the approach to them “blocked” its way. “UNESCO has very strict rules and conditions. We are waisting our time here.” said the UNESCO representatives. Same problem threats the Akhpat church. Though it is already under UNESCO protection, it can be excluded from the list, because the head of the local administration, pursuing his personal interests, decided to build a restaurant under the walls of the fortress.

It is difficult to exaggerate the indifference of the Armenian government to protection of the national heritage. Armenian delegation remained indifferent to the opening of the “restored” Armenian “Surb Khach Akhtamar” church of the V^th century in Turkey, where Turkish authorities changed its name to erase all traits and evidence of the Turkish lands being Armenian before. Armenian government does not pay due attention to the renaming and rebuilding of the Armenian churches in Turkey and Azerbaijan and the “georgianization” of Armenian churches in Georgia…

“Discover Armenia” aims to introduce Armenia and the Armenian cultural and historical heritage, Armenian science, religion and events abroad. The magazine will be issued in English in initial quantity of 3000 copies.

“Discover Armenia” will be distributed in hotels of Armenia, Embassies and airplanes,” said one of the co-authors of the magazine Armen Hovhannisyan.

Mekhak Apresyan, the head of the tourism department of the Ministry of Economy of Armenia, pointed during the presentation, that the magazine will favor the creation of the Armenian travel image in the world. He also mentioned that the Armenian Tourism Development Agency (ATDA) issues and distributes similar periodicals in Japanese, French, Italian, English and German.