GUM Market
Dried fruit, lavash baked in a tonir and cheeses, in a Soviet hall left intact.
Duration
45 min – 1 hr 30 min
Best time
In the morning
Open
Every day
Entry price
Free
The GUM market occupies a Soviet hall left in its original state, and it is Yerevan's food market. It sells mostly dried and candied fruit: apricots, plums, walnuts threaded on reduced grape must — Armenia is an apricot country, and the fruit is on its flag in the literal sense, by its colour.
Lavash, the flatbread baked stuck to the wall of a buried oven called a tonir, is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list. Sellers offer a taste as a matter of course, and refusing is poorly received — but tasting does not oblige you to buy.
Getting there
Movses Khorenatsi street, south of the centre. Twenty minutes on foot from Republic Square, or a taxi.
Rules on site
Prices are by the kilo and add up fast: ask for the total before the bag is filled. The market runs on cash, in dram, and closes in the early afternoon.