A group of young people organized a visit to one of Yerevan’s last remaining old districts – Kond.
The video shows a crew of cameramen and Yerevan heritage activists visiting the area, talking to inhabitants.
Admittedly, the whole district is in a very bad shape and something needs to be done about it. In many cities of the world that I’ve visited, such historical buildings have been renovated and restored, turned into a main tourism attraction. Yerevan’s current rulers, however, with their lack of taste and understanding of heritage, only seem to think that tall, glass and concrete buildings deserve to represent this ancient city. I’m startled to think what would happen if someone offered them to redevelop Rome or Athens.
I hope something will stop them from deleting the old Yerevan.
To tell you the truth, Italian government did something like that to Rome in the last century. They destroyed a whole area full of imperial and middle age building to make this horrible monument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altare_della_Patria
And that’s very close to the colosseum… but Rome has a huge heritage so that shameful decision wasn’t enough to delete the city’s historical profile.
The Victor Emmanuel II monument is pompous and is quite an eyesore. I couldn’t believe that they would do something like that in Rome and never got used to it no matter how many times I was around it.
If the mayor of Yerevan tore down some of its distinct buildings to build office-park style buildings, tearing down Kond will not be an issue to them. As far as the heritage goes, it will still be remembered while toasting around the khash tables.
to tell the truth the majority of the structures and infrastructure in Kond are not suitable for proper life. I wonder the people in the video would live in a kond average house. In this video they were only 3-4 examples that are worth a restoration. The rest can be taken down and replaced with cottage like 3 story buildings. the construction companies can still make a profit even if they give 1/3 or equivalent space to the original occupants.