
Northern Avenue
Pedestrian boulevard of glass-fronted shops and cafes, built by clearing an entire old city-center neighborhood.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Northern Avenue in Yerevan opens with a courtroom bribe and a bulldozer already idling in 2004, then traces how this pedestrian boulevard actually got built. A construction boss named Pavel Anderson later admitted paying off a judge to win a land dispute, and claimed the payoffs reached all the way to the president's chief of staff and the mayor's office. The guide also follows the avenue's own strange history, sketched by architect Alexander Tamanian back in 1924 and left unbuilt for decades before ground finally broke in 2002, cutting a new route from the Opera House toward Republic Square.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Freedom Square
Central plaza by a pink-tuff opera house, stage for protest rallies and a broken promise of open green space.
Alexander Tamanian Statue
Basalt figure of a city planner bent over his own blueprint, with a working fountain set into its stone base.
Republic Square
Grand tuff-stone plaza ringed by hand-carved neoclassical government buildings around musical fountains.
English Park
Tree-lined city park shaped by fashionable real estate and public land disputes since it opened.
Yerevan Cascade
Soviet-era stone staircase of fountains and terraces, revived as an open-air sculpture museum.
Kond Pedestrian Tunnel
Half-kilometer Soviet-era passage burrowing beneath a hilltop village of stone houses and hidden cellars.