Cultural Landscape and National Iconography: Nation and Identity in Armenian Tourism

Armenians have always represented a Christian and Indo-european “outpost” in a mainly Islamic and Turkish speaking regional environment. That’s why religious identity has always played a significant role, contributing to the survival of the cultural element in an alien and often hostile context. For centuries Armenian culture has been generating a very peculiar landscape, dominated by material evidence of religiousness (religious architecture, khatchkars) and completed by an impressive iconographic display. On such a base governmental institutions and private operators are starting promoting a kind of “niche” tourism, addressing a public willing to experience unusual routes of cultural tourism. This paper aims to highlight the strong interdependence that can be found in Armenia between the two domains of tourism and “nationality” when looking both at the origin of tourist flows - tourists are mainly of Armenian origin, coming from the main regions of the Diaspora (Western Europe, Americas, Middle East) - and at the iconographic display, where its constituents don’t just stand for attraction features to be exploited by a destination branding strategy, but also for identity references of a nationalist rethoric aiming to stress the cultural and geo-political opposition betwen Armenia and the hostile regional context.