The village of Kosh, Armenia

Visiting the village of Kosh, it is hard to miss the large structure overlooking the entire area. Our next Armenia In Between stop is the 13th-century Kosh Fortress.

The fortress is located at the top of a steep hill on the northern edge of the village, there is a rough path that you can take to the top which doesn’t take too long.

The first thing you may notice as you head towards it is the color and design of the walls. The southern wall is the most intact and contains the only intact entranceway.

The bottom half of the visible wall is constructed from rough square basalt stone. This stone construction is common. The upper half of the walls are constructed from clean-cut orange tuff stone. Separating these two layers is a narrow strip of black tuff.

It is not usual to see the walls of a fortress built in this decorative way. Maybe there used to be another outer wall. There are no traces that I could see. Since the location is on the top of a hill, larger walls were not necessary.

The fortress has a rectangular layout with circular towers in each corner. The interior walls of the circular towers are also lined with orange tuff stone.

There is another entrance from the north which is not intact. Besides the walls and bases of the towers, not much remains on the interior of the structure.

The interior floor is very rocky and unfinished and there are no cutouts to enter the towers so we can theorize that there was a finished floor above this base with entrances to the towers and whatever else was inside the fortress.

From the top of the fortress, you have a beautiful view of the surrounding area! There are tombstones from the village cemetery all around and even on the edges of the hill around the fortress.

Raffi Berberian in Armenians And Armenia