Mineral Water Gallery

The mineral water gallery (Ախբյուրաբաղ in Armenian) is a colonnaded building in the town centre where visitors can walk along a row of taps, each labelled with the spring it draws from and its mineral content, and drink warm, slightly fizzy water directly from the source. This is the classic Armenian spa experience — the water is genuinely therapeutic in the way that European spa waters are, and the ritual of tasting and comparing the springs is pleasant.

The water is mildly sulphurous, mildly salty, and strongly carbonated. Different taps have noticeably different tastes. You can bring bottles to fill; the springs flow continuously. The gallery building itself is a typical example of Soviet sanatorium architecture — slightly grand and slightly faded, with good bones.

things to do sight
A story
Jermuk mineral water was bottled under the Soviet Union and exported across the USSR as a health product — it was on the menu of Kremlin banquets and sold in every Intourist hotel. The springs contain bicarbonate, sulphate, and carbon dioxide in concentrations similar to Vichy or Evian, but the temperature at the source is 28–33°C. Local tradition holds that a tumbler of warm mineral water from the tap helps digestion; medical opinion is more cautious.