Goris

Goris lies in a valley of Syunik among striking pyramidal rock formations and caves. The older settlement of Kores stood on the eastern side of the valley and is associated with a village named in the thirteenth-century history of Syunik by Stepanos Orbelian. Its churches and rock-cut dwellings grew amid a landscape shaped by erosion.

A manuscript copied by the priest Barsegh in 1624 records the name Goris and attests to the work of scribes in the settlement, where several churches served the local community. Another seventeenth-century manuscript recalls a merchant who came there to buy silk, evidence of the village's place in the regional exchange of goods. The area passed to Russia after the Russo-Persian War and the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813.