The capital and by far the largest city of Armenia, a small country in the South Caucasus, between Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran. Roughly a third of everyone in Armenia lives there. It is one of the oldest cities in the world that people have never stopped living in — its fortress, Erebuni, was founded in 782 BC, and the city celebrates a birthday older than Rome's. Modern Yerevan looks unlike most old cities because it was largely rebuilt in the twentieth century to one architect's plan, in a warm pink volcanic stone called tuff, which is why it is sometimes called the pink city. Mount Ararat, the mountain on Armenia's national symbols, stands huge on the skyline to the south — but the mountain itself is inside Turkey, on the other side of a closed border, so people in Yerevan look at it every day and cannot go there. That fact tells you a lot about the place. In English you will see the older spelling Erevan in books, and Russian-influenced writing from Soviet times. Say it with the stress at the end: yeh-reh-VAHN.