Lori Berd – Capital of a Forgotten Kingdom on a Tongue of Land

Lori Berd sits on a natural promontory enclosed by two river gorges: the Dzoraget to the west and the Miskhana to the east. The plateau falls steeply into the ravines on three sides; the fourth, to the northwest, was the sole vulnerable point — there the Kyurikid kingdom raised a citadel wall 214 metres long, in places 20 metres thick and up to 25 metres high. At 1,379 metres elevation, roughly five kilometres northeast of Stepanavan, a urban settlement once sprawled across 33 hectares.

Location: promontory between two gorges

Founded between 1005 and 1020 by King David I Anhoghin (Anlakhch – "the Landless") of the Kyurikid dynasty, a branch of the Armenian Bagratouni. From mid-11th century onward, Lori Berd became capital of the Tashir-Dzoraget kingdom (also called the Kyurikian kingdom). At its height between the 11th and 13th centuries, an estimated 10,000 people lived here; the city was linked via trade routes to Ani, Dvin, and Tiflis. In 1105 the Seljuks seized the fortress; in 1118 the Georgian king David the Builder recovered it. In 1185 it passed to the Armenian military house of Sakarian. In June 1236 Mongols under Chagatai Nayan destroyed the city largely — including the crypt-chapel of David's wife. Partially rebuilt by the Orbelians from 1430 onward, the fortress changed hands between Turkish and Persian control from 1562 to 1734. By the late 18th century it lost strategic importance entirely. Since 1966 Yerevan State University has conducted excavations, uncovering two bathhouses with hypocaust heating (11th–13th centuries), a two-storey palace with pools and fountains, and a collection of approximately 200 ceramic pipes — evidence of a long-distance water-supply system extending five to six kilometres. Surviving structures include the citadel wall with gate, a six-domed building, bathhouse ruins, and a medieval bridge over the Miskhana of dressed basalt blocks (length 9 m, width 2.8 m).

History: from founding city to ruin

David I Anhoghin — "the Landless" — founded the fortress on a spur naturally defended by gorges on three sides. His grandson Kyurike II declared Lori Berd capital of an independent Armenian principality in mid-11th century, one that navigated between Georgian and Byzantine spheres of influence. The city grew into a regional trade hub: markets, baths, palaces, and a sophisticated water system emerged on the plateau. In 1105 the Seljuks occupied the site; in 1118 David the Builder incorporated it into the Georgian realm and granted it to the Orbelian princely clan, later to the Armenian general Sarkis Zakarian. Mongols under Chagatai Nayan stormed it in 1236, destroying much of the urban fabric and despoiling the founder's wife's burial chapel. Rebuilding under the Orbelians from 1430 remained incomplete; struggles between Ottomans and Safavids in the 16th and 17th centuries gradually depopulated the plateau. Into the 18th century the complex still served as military refuge, then vanished from political consciousness.

Legend of Ashot the Iron

According to tradition, not David Anhoghin but the Bagratouni king Ashot II Yerkat (the Iron, r. 914–928) founded the fortress. In folk memory Lori Berd sometimes bears the epithet "Ashot's Iron Fortress," because legend holds he slept there during his passage through northern provinces. Historically this cannot be verified — archaeological evidence and written sources place construction a full century after Ashot's death. The confusion likely arises because Ashot Yerkat, as the most celebrated figure of the Bagratouni age, became a screen onto which various buildings were projected in regional memory.

Why come here

Lori Berd is one of the few medieval Armenian city-fortresses where not only walls but infrastructure has been exposed: aqueducts, hypocaust structures, street traces. Walking the citadel wall places you simultaneously at the gorge rim with open views down wooded Dzoraget slopes. Both — the archaeological record and the topography — are compressed into a single compact space. Visitors with interest in 11th-century Armenian statehood find here the most tangible remnant of the Tashir-Dzoraget kingdom. For all others, the scene remains: an empty basalt plateau above deep ravines, with enough original substance to sense the site's former scale.

Practical information

Best season: April to November; in winter the plateau often lies under snow. Route: from Stepanavan northeast toward Lori Berd village, total distance approximately 5 km. Free admission; no official attendant on-site. Sturdy footwear recommended — gorge rims are unprotected. Bring water; no on-site infrastructure. Can be combined with a visit to Stepanavan's Dendropark on the same day.