Echmiadzin Rooms To Rent

Nowhere demonstrates better than Echmiadzin Armenia's ability to retain and foster its distinct cultural identity, no matter what the assaults or upheavals history hits it with, and Echmiadzin rooms to rent can be found throughout the town. Echmiadzin is Armenia's holiest place, the seat of the Catholicos (Spiritual Leader) of the Armenian Church, and tabernacle of the soul of Armenia's self belief.

The Cathedral complex, churches, public offices and houses from top to bottom of the social scale, would elsewhere be souvenirs of history; here they are testament to the longevity of a continuous commitment, to both a religious philosophy, and the Armenian culture of which it is the core. Echmiadzin has an extraordinary atmosphere. Just walking the streets, sharing daily routines with the residents, it feels like a communications centre, sending and receiving spiritual signals round the world. You stroll in and out of, between and round buildings and shops whose fabric could be anything from 3rd to 21st century, increasingly aware that they represent a living continuum of dedication to a culture that was ancient when the Cathedral was founded in 303 AD. You can even visit the remains of the pagan, fire worshipping society that preceded it.

Echmiadzin is absorbing and often beautiful. It provokes awe and wonder. Everywhere it shows how Persian, Byzantine, Latin, Greek, Azerbaijani, Syrian and many other influences have been transmuted into a single Armenian entity. Church and State house amazing artefacts whose exquisite intricacies will make you objectively breathless; until at some point, like the Catholicos' Throne Room in the Cathedral complex, the dazzle of wrought gold is almost overwhelming.
That's when you should head for Echmiadzin's Zbosaigee (strollers') park, outside the meticulously groomed complex. Lively and unkempt beneath the shade of tall trees, the park is where people hang out to talk or play or eat. Being friendly, they'll be happy for you to join in, which you might feel is a sort of twinning of souls.

Baku Even its residents refer to the three cities of Baku. The Icheri Shekher (old town) is the magnificent walled fortress set on the Apsheron Peninsula of the Caspian Sea. The Russians restored its towers in 1806, so the 12th century medieval city is still very much a living entity of narrow streets, mosques, palaces, caravanserais and ancient buildings. To the south is the area known as Boomtown, built on the profits of the first wave of oil exploitation after 1872. Broad avenues of beauxarts architecture look out across fine beaches, and the museums of Fine Arts, History and Literature have appropriate homes in the huge mansions of pre Revolutionary millionaires. The third city lies behind, backed up into the hills that line Baku Bay, and is an altogether grimmer urban assemblage of monolithic, Soviet drabness.

Since 1990, that Soviet skyline is changing as 21st century skyscrapers bite into it with spendthrift speed but variable taste and quality. The phenomenal recent expansion now extends to townships on islands in the bay, including one, 'Oil Rocks', built on stilts 100 km (63 mi) offshore in the Caspian.

If you've got money, Baku can be a fabulous, highstakes playground. Money buys a cleaned beach, air conditioning, shelter from freezing polar winds, and gardens in an otherwise semiarid salt marsh. But ethnographically, Baku's cosmopolitanism is confined to the upper echelons of business and politics. Despite being endowed with a treasure trove of historic cultures, since 1990 the Azeri government has deported much of Baku's significant Armenian community, which had prospered there since the 15th century. Even the restoration of Jewish property and synagogues appropriated by the Soviet Union could be seen as a cynical exercise in international placation. Outside the elite, you can't avoid politics in Baku, and commenting on them can easily reveal the city's least attractive, official character. Stick with uncomplicated tourism.