Abovyan City

Abovian (Arm: Աբովյան), Kotayk Marz

Abovian (38876 p), a new industrial city founded in 1963 on the site of the early village of Elar, was named after Khachatur Abovian, Yerevan school inspector, climber of Mt. Ararat, and founder of modern Armenian literature (1809-1848? -- his mysterious disappearance, perhaps at the hands of Czarist authorities fearful of Europe-inspired revolutions, has never been explained). Abovian is laid out ambitiously with wide streets and high-rise apartments. The ancient village of Elar, a key site at the time of the Urartian conquest, occupies a hill just S of town, but has been almost entirely obliterated by the modern cemetery (chapel of S. Stepanos). Elar was inhabited from the 4th millennium BC, as attested by chamber tombs and other finds. An Urartean cuneiform inscription of Argishti I refers to it as Darani.

Source: Rediscovering Armenia Guidebook

St. Hovhannes Church of Abovyan consecrated

http://www.armradio.am/en/2013/05/14/st-hovhannes-church-of-abovyan-consecrated/ 19:02 14.05.2013

Karen Ghazaryan `Radiolur'

Today His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, presided over the Service of Consecration for the St. Hovhannes Church of Abovyan in the Kotayk Diocese.

The ceremony was attended by the Presidents of Armenia and Belarus Serzh Sargsyan and Alexander Lukashenko. The construction of the church has been financed by leader of the Prosperous Armenia Party Gagik Tsarukyan.

Among the attendees were also Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan, ex-President Robert Kocharyan and his spouse. Gagik Tsarukyan expressed gratitude to all those who accepted the invitation to be preset at the consecration ceremony.

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