Artashat City

Territory:                                       44,011 km²
Population:                                   25,600 Persons
Distance from capital/Yerevan:    29 km
Height of above sea level:            1,900-2,050 m 
The main branches of economy:  industry, agriculture

Artashat is the center of Ararat region, near the Araks River in the Ararat valley.

Ancient capital on the Silk Road
The city was founded by the king Artashes A in 189 BCE, the founder of the Armenian Artashesian dynasty (189 BCE- 1), who moved the capital to a complex of hills overlooking the Ararat plain. Artashat (Artaxata) was named after the new king and roughly translates to “Joy” or “Pleasure of Artashes”. Planned along Greco-Roman lines, Artashat rivaled the 7 hills of Rome with its own twelve hills, Strabo and Plutarch calling it as the "Armenian Carthage". 
Artashat was a large center of Hellenistic culture in Armenia. The first theatre in Armenia (Bacchae of Euripides) was built in the city in 53 BC. Succeeding kings ruled over a country with trade routes between Asia and the West, which was named the Silk Way in the 2nd c. BCE, and which gave the city unimagined wealth. Perhaps because of this, Armenia found itself at the fulcrum of a fight between the new super powers, Rome and Parthia, for control of Asia.
As the richest, most beautiful and one of the known centers, in Artashat was built Armenian idols temples and statues. The city's patron goddess Anahit bust is in the city center.

Wirtschaft
Manufacturing is the main trend of industry of the city, in which manufacture of food products and beverages (processing and canning of fruit and vegetable, manufacture of distilled alcoholic beverages) as well as manufacture of other non-metallic mineral products (food products processing and preserving of fruit and vegetables, manufacture of paper and paper bard) and manufacture of tobacco products (tobacco fermentation) comprise prevailing part.
Agriculture is of great importance in the economic life of the town as well, in which cultivation is the main trend. The city has 12 factories. There are wine, canned food, porcelain, pottery, stone processing productions.