Lori district

Lori district is the first by population. It is connected with all nearby districts and Georgia by its highways.

The territory of Lori occupies the half eastern part of Gugark Land of historical Armenia. Here in X-XI centuries an independent Armenian country existed – the kingdom of Lori. The part of district was the hereditary estate of Zakaryans’.

Natural conditions and resources

District entirely occupies the Debet river basin. For this territory are typical extensive mountain chains, stepped slopes and canyons. Here are distinguished Pambak and Lori concavities and Lori canyon.

Concavities are separated from each other by Bazum chain. Here is a Pushkin mountain pass where the highway passes and where in 1828 Alexander Pushkin on the way of Erzrum saw the corpse of Alexander Griboyedov who died in Persia and was transported to Tbilisi. There he was the authorized minister of Russia and was organizing the deportation of Armenian people to the Armenian districts joined to Russia.

The main waterway of the district is Debed River with its Dzoraget, Pambak and Martz tributaries. The last one is reach in mineral springs.

The district is also famous in forests, mountain and Alpine flora.

Population

Lori has been settled from ancient times. It differs from other districts by its large population. Here is relatively large number of urban population.

Towns

Vanadzor is the administrative center (Mets Gharaqilisa, Kirovakan). At the beginning of last century it was a small settlement. In 1930 it had become a town and began to develop from 1950. Nowadays Vanadzor is one of the biggest industrial, educational, scientific, health and cultural centers of Armenia. Vanadzor is also an important knot of highways and railways. By its population Vanadzor is in the third place.

The other towns of Lori are Alaverdi, Stepanavan, Spitak, Tashir, Tumanyan, Shamlugh, Akhtala.

Alaverdi is famous that even at the end of 19th century there was build a copper founding factory "Manes" which was the first-born of Armenian heavy industry. It was the biggest metallurgical factory of Transcaucasia which produced the 1/4 part of copper whenever produced in Russia Empire. At the end of 1980’s producing was stopped because of environmental pollution. Now it is working in part-time capacity.

The tragic earthquake of 1988 did a great damage to the industry of Lori. Many factories were completely destroyed but now some of them are restored.

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In Dsegh village there is the house-museum of great Armenian poet Hovhannes Tumanyan.