The Pink City
Yerevan
Armenia's capital is built of volcanic stone in shades of pink, rose and orange.
Why Yerevan is tuff pink
Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, is often called the Pink City. Its central buildings are faced with tuff, a light rock formed from compacted volcanic ash, quarried in the surrounding highlands. Armenian tuff comes in pink, rose, orange, lilac and black. The modern city was planned in the 1920s by the architect Alexander Tamanian, who set government buildings, the opera house and wide avenues in this stone, with carved details drawn from medieval Armenian churches. Republic Square is the best place to see it. The colour deepens at sunrise and sunset. On clear days the snow-covered cone of Mount Ararat, across the border in Turkey, stands behind the city.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Yerevan
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Yerevan" on Wikipedia. If you know Yerevan and we have it wrong, tell us.
More colour cities
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🇩🇿 Pastel cubes of the M'zabGhardaïaA Saharan hill town of flat-roofed houses in sand pink, ochre and pale blue, crowned by one plain minaret.Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Jaipur In: Chainwit., CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Vrindavan In: Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY 3.0, source
- Dhaka Bd: Tanweer drmc, Public domain, source
- Shiraz Ir: آرش (Arche), CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Ghardaia Dz: Camille Gillet, CC BY-SA 4.0, source