Zarobyan Street and Mid-Century Tuff Villas

Why is it significant?

You are walking along Zarobyan Street, a charming residential lane winding gently across the southwestern slope overlooking central Yerevan.

Key Facts

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You are walking along Zarobyan Street, a charming residential lane winding gently across the southwestern slope overlooking central Yerevan. In the mid-twentieth century, municipal planners designated this hillside for private villa residences dedicated to Armenia's foremost intellectuals, scientists, and artists. The street preserves an intimate village ambiance: wrought-iron gates draped in wild grapevines, fruiting pomegranate trees, and apricot orchards terraced behind stone retaining walls.

Note the architecture of these private residences, built from peach, apricot, and coral-tinted Artuk tufa. Architects incorporated features of traditional Armenian highland estates: wide open loggias with carved timber ceilings, stone-arched dormers, and private inner courtyards with exterior spiral staircases. Here stands the memorial House-Museum of Avetik Isahakyan, the revered master of Armenian lyric poetry, where his study, personal library, and manuscript drafts have been preserved exactly as he left them upon his death in 1957.

Along this cobbled street strolled William Saroyan, Martiros Saryan, Aram Khachaturian, and poet Paruyr Sevak, visiting Isahakyan for philosophical discussions over glasses of local Areni wine. The street commemorates Yakov Zarobyan, first secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia in the 1960s, who courageously petitioned Moscow for permission to erect the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide. In the garden behind Isahakyan's villa grows a mulberry tree planted by the poet's own hands.

Through the almond trees on the hillside, lovely views unfold across the rooftops of Kentron toward the distant golden cross of Saint Gregory Cathedral. The quiet street offers a glimpse of Yerevan's mid-century creative golden age. Wrought-iron balconies, fragrant rose gardens, and ivy-clad stone portals preserve the quiet domestic warmth of mid-century Yerevan, while gaps between the heritage villas offer breathtaking glimpses of the sunlit city and its iconic mountain backdrop. The peaceful residential street remains a testament to the intellectual flowering of post-war Armenia.

Walk east down the gentle slope directly to the grand stone base of the Cascade complex.