Street art showcases the heart and rhythm of Gyumri

There are cities you visit knowing exactly what you came to see. And then there are cities where the longer you walk, the more you start noticing the people sitting outside, the conversations spilling onto the streets, and the doors that have probably been opened thousands of times before you arrived. Gyumri is one of those cities. Its streets have passed through different political eras, its buildings have been damaged and rebuilt, and an earthquake once reduced much of the city to ruins. Yet somehow, beneath all those changes, something has remained remarkably stubborn: the character of the place. You can see it in the black tuff walls, hear it in the jokes exchanged between locals, find it in workshops where people still make things by hand, and notice it in the way people occupy the streets. Maybe that is why Gyumri is difficult to explain through facts alone. The city makes more sense when you see how its history continues to exist in ordinary life, rather than only in monuments or museums. And once you start looking at it that way, it becomes easy to understand why so many people leave Gyumri with a feeling that they have encountered something they cannot quite find anywhere else. Before it became the Gyumri we know today, the city lived through several identities. It was known as Alexandropol during the Russian Empire. After the Soviet takeover, it became Leninakan. Following independence, the name Gyumri returned. But names are only one way a city changes. The old Kumayri district makes that especially easy to see. The streets do not feel perfectly preserved, and the layers of the city are visible in the buildings themselves, where traces of different periods exist alongside newer signs, shops, cars and everyday life. The stone is dark, but Gyumri has never been a particularly quiet city. Its humor has always been part of its personality. You can hear it in everyday conversations, in the way strangers tease each other, and in the ability to make a joke out of an ordinary moment. Some of Armenia’s most recognizable comedians came from Gyumri, including Mher Mkrtchyan (better known as Frunzik), whose performances became famous for combining humor with something much more human underneath. He was born and raised in Gyumri, and his characters often carried the warmth, sadness and sharp humour associated with the city. It almost feels appropriate that a city known for its humor produced someone who could make an entire country laugh and cry at the same time. But Frunzik is far from the only legend whose story begins here. Gyumri has also given Armenian writers and poets whose relationship with the city was just as deeply rooted in its streets. One of them was Avetik Isahakyan, one of Armenia’s most beloved poets, who was born in 1875. He grew up right in the heart of the city on Varpetats Street. Over his lifetime, Isahakyan traveled across Europe, studied in Germany and lived in grand cities like Geneva and Paris. Yet no matter how far he went or how beautiful those European cities were, his heart never really left the cobbled streets of his youth. In his famous poem “Pandukht” (The Wanderer), he captures that heavy ache of being in a foreign land where nothing quite feels like yours: “I have walked far from my homeland, A poor wanderer now, with no roof of my own…” Isahakyan spent decades wandering the world, but his poetry kept the sound of his hometown streets alive. That same attachment appears in the work of another Gyumri poet, Hovhannes Shiraz. Shiraz is the raw, beating heart of Gyumri’s poetic soul. Born in 1914, he grew up as an orphan. He didn’t learn about life from dusty schoolbooks but from the noisy street markets, stone workshops and the quick jokes neighbors traded across backyards. He loved his hometown so much that he didn’t just write about it — he talked to Gyumri as if it were a living person. In his famous anthem dedicated to his birthplace, titled “Gyumri-Leninakan”, he praises the simple, everyday people who make Gyumri special: "You are the salt of Armenia, Gyumri, witty and eloquent, A sieve for truth, Gyumri, wise and pure-hearted. Your daughters build homes, a cradle of immortality, Your sons are builders, you brilliant stonemason." To see what the Gyumri Shiraz wrote about, it helps to leave the old streets behind and follow the city into its everyday places. One of the easiest places to do that is the market. There you can see vendors arranging fresh fruit and vegetables, cheese and other local products, neighbors stopping to talk, and groups of men sitting together over a game of nardi while conversations move from one subject to another. Ordinary places like this can feel strangely personal. And there is perhaps no better example of that than a barbershop that has stood through several generations of Gyumri life. On Gayi Street, a small door leads into Luxe Barbershop. Opened in 1941, it is one of the oldest continuously operating barbershops in Armenia. More than 80 years later, much of its old atmosphere remains. The shop survived the political changes of the Soviet period and the devastating 1988 earthquake that destroyed much of Leninakan, yet it continued serving customers. Inside, the old red chairs remain alongside old-fashioned mirrors and sinks, while many of the tools look as though they belong to another era, and even the barbers still wear traditional white coats. For decades, the barbershop has been more than a place for getting a haircut. Generations of customers have passed through its doors, making the shop another small piece of the city’s continuity. Gyumri has been damaged, rebuilt and modernized, but its soul was never lost under the rubble. Walking through the city today, the bridge between yesterday and now is everywhere. Gyumri is a place where its history isn't tucked away in museums but lived out on every corner.

Street art showcases the heart and rhythm of Gyumri

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Nare Arushanyan

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This story is FREE for you...

Nare Arushanyan

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