Dilijan

Dilijan is the counterweight to the dry stone landscapes most visitors associate with Armenia. The town sits inside a national park of dense beech and oak forest, and the air, the mineral springs and the wooden balconies earned it the nickname of the Armenian Switzerland in Soviet times.

Two monasteries in the hills nearby are the finest in the region. Haghartsin, rebuilt over the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, stands in a clearing surrounded by forest; Goshavank was founded by the scholar Mkhitar Gosh, who wrote the first Armenian law code, and holds an intricately carved khachkar considered a masterpiece of the form.

In the town itself, the restored Sharambeyan street preserves a block of nineteenth-century craft workshops. Parz Lake, a short drive up the valley, is the usual starting point for walks in the national park.