UrbEx: An Unfinished Hotel In Armenia

Unfinished Hotel, #5 (An Expensive Cow Shlter), Tsakhkadzor, Armenia, 2022

Ghost Construction

Unfinished buildings in Armenia are a common sight and may be one of the first things a “western” tourist might notice, especially if driving into the outskirts of Yerevan, the capital city.

Why are they unfinished, you ask? Some surely date to just prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain (1989-1991), while others are, perhaps, more recent investments that ran short of completion funds or simply fell victim to those early and frantic ups and downs of this new capitalist system.

There are many, many, very Soviet-perfumed abandoned buildings and factories in the ‘burbs of Yerevan (curiously, minus the massive grafitti that is so common in the West) that are just begging for extensive photographic documentation–so consider Armenia if you are a serious urbex type (at your own risk, of course).

One example: A New Hotel For Tsakhkadzor?

This town, about an hour northeast of Yerevan, is known as a ski resort town and, thus, there must have been a lot of interest in building out the tourist infrastructure. Perhaps this particular hotel project was started just before the fall of the Soviet Union?

Whatever the cause of the investment failure, the hotel–just one small example of Armenia’s many abandoned construction projects–was obviously designed to be quite the luxurious dig.

Now, though, it serves as nothing more than a huge cow shelter… and a magnet for us amateur urbex types.