Armenia & Georgia - Treasures of the Southern Caucasus

Armenia and Georgia belong neither to Europe, nor Asia, but stand in a place in-between – the South Caucasus. Two ancient lands, two modern republics. This is a land whose long history and archaeology span the ages. The earliest well-dated hominin fossils in Europe were found at Dmanisi in Georgia. The Neolithic in the South Caucasus brought domestication of animals and plants (including grapes, and wine production), preceding the equivalent revolution in north-west Europe by some two millennia. It was an early centre for metallurgy – as we will see at Tbilisi and Yerevan’s history museums. Its cultures have been shaped by long contact with the peoples of the Near East.

The kingdoms of Armenia and Georgia emerge soon after Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Achaemenids. Both found themselves at a critical interface between empires: the Romans, Byzantines and later the Ottomans to the West, and the Parthians, Sasanid Persians, Arab Caliphate and Safavids to the South and East. North, beyond the Greater Caucasus mountains, the vast Eurasian steppe unfolds, home of the nomad powers, until Russia claimed it following the gunpowder revolution.

Today, Georgia and Armenia sit between two continents, astride some of the most important gas and oil pipeline routes in the world. And yet it is the rhythm, the periodicity of its history that makes it so attractive to the visitor. Armenia dominated in the 1st century bc when the Seleucid empire was in retreat. Its great ecclesiastical monuments are the product of early Christianisation: distinctive domed churches and monasteries that were developed from the late sixth century; and the grand cathedrals and monastic academies of the 11th and 12th centuries. A magnificent Georgian tradition of folk and ecclesiastical polyphony exists, that Tsarist- and Soviet-era choirmasters consolidated into a national art form.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the marriage of oriental architecture with the latest European trends in Art Nouveau, left Tbilisi with a legacy of buildings that late Soviet austerity has failed to erase. Armenian history is a model of resilience in the face of tragedy; Yerevan, planned in the aftermath of the first great genocide of the 20th century, has been praised as the most attractive of post-Soviet cities. 

Armenian cuisine draws on the legacy of a great diaspora; Georgian on the fertility of its agricultural lowlands. Food and wine are a highlight of the trip.