Persian Yerevan: a walking tour of the city’s Iranian heritage

Before 1828, Yerevan — then Erivan — was the seat of a Persian khanate, a city of gardens, caravanserais and eight mosques on the road between Tabriz and Tiflis. Most of that city is gone, but not all of it. This half-day walk connects what remains.

1. The Blue Mosque (Gök Jami)

Start on Mashtots Avenue. Built in 1765 by Hussein Ali Khan, the governor of Erivan, the Blue Mosque is the most significant surviving building of the city's Iranian period — and the only active mosque in Armenia. In Soviet times it survived as the city museum and a planetarium; between 1996 and 1999 Iran restored it to worship.

Step off the avenue and the noise stops: a courtyard of rose beds and apricot trees, a turquoise-tiled dome, 28 cells along the arcade that once housed a madrasa. Entry is free; shoulders covered, shoes off in the prayer hall.

2. Kond and its lost mosques

Twenty minutes on foot, up into Kond — the oldest surviving quarter of Yerevan, a 17th-century knot of alleys that urban planners never managed to flatten. In Persian times this hill was home to Muslims, Armenians and the city's Bohemian poor alike.

Look for the ruins of the Tepebashi mosque (early 19th century), its brick arches now holding up someone's grapevine, and the traces of the smaller Kond mosque absorbed into houses. Nothing is signposted — that is precisely the charm. Locals will point the way if you ask for mzkit.

3. The fortress that vanished

South of the centre, above the Hrazdan gorge, stood the Erivan fortress and the Sardar's palace with its famous Mirror Hall — the setting of the 1827 siege that ended Persian rule. The fortress was demolished in Soviet times; today the Noy wine and brandy factory occupies the site, and fragments of the fortress walls survive in its cellars (the factory tour is the only way in — taste the 1944 vintage while you are at it).

Below it, the 17th-century Red Bridge over the Hrazdan once carried the Tabriz caravans into the city.

4. Persia on parchment

Finish at the Matenadaran: among its 23,000 manuscripts are illuminated Persian Qurans, firmans of the shahs, and Armenian-Persian dictionaries that tell the entangled story better than any fortress could.

Practical notes

• Total walk: ~5 km. Do it in the morning, the Blue Mosque courtyard is at its best before 11.
• Friday midday the mosque is busiest with worshippers; visit respectfully or pick another day.
• Everything on this route is free except the Noy factory tour and the Matenadaran ticket.