Alaverdi Travel Guide

Alaverdi is an industrial town located in the northern Debed River gorge in Lori Marz in northeastern Armenia.  It is dominated by natural beauty and manmade monstrosities: huge derelict and abandoned factories and a twenty-story high smokestack that belches the refuse from the copper-smelting plant below.  On a clear day, the mountains that surround the town are enough to blot out the Soviet-made, concrete mess below, especially when viewed from the plateau-top villages of Odzun, Haghpat and Sanahin that surround Alaverdi. Alaverdi is an important city as it lies on the main road between Tbilisi and Yerevan, though the winding, narrow mountain pass roads that surround it do not make it appear so.  If traveling from Yerevan to Tbilisi, make a right and cross over the Debed River on the first main double bridge from the west bank to the east bank of river, then make a left to continue north to the Georgian border.  The road on the east bank is much better than on the west.  You also avoid driving through town, but get a great view of the historic center with its church, square and medieval foot bridge from the elevated road on the east bank.  The road through town on the west bank is riddled with pot holes.