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Yerevantsis enjoy the play of spray

For the past two weeks Yerevan’s Republic Square has been crowded nightly with families and tourists gathered to watch water.

After a long lay-off for repairs, the Dancing Fountains returned on Independence Day, September 21, with two hours worth of splashes and sprays and spouts accompanied by colored lights and the music of Armenian and European classical and pop music.

According to Frunz Basentsyan, head of the municipality’s urban improvements and utilities department, this combination of water, light and sound is achieved through 87 pumps installed in the pool in front of the National Gallery. The “peacock’s fan tail” effect on the water is achieved through two cylinders installed in the center of the pool and special monitors placed atop them to carry various visual pictures.

The repairs were carried out jointly by the “Gohar” building company and the French Aqua Show organization. The mayor’s office had allocated 129 million drams (or some $370,000 at that time) for the work.

City officials say the Armenian side had completely changed the tiles and the pipe system of the pool, leaving the external look unchanged, while the French installed the color-and-sound systems.

The Aqua Show company built fountains on the same technologies in a number of countries, with all of them different from each other. In Yerevan it was projected with the features of Republic Square taken into consideration.

This fountain complex, which is part and parcel of the main square’s architectural ensemble and was built still in 1939 according to the design of architect Alexander Tamanyan, was last repaired 21 years ago.

The dancing fountains remind elder Yerevantsis of the 1970s.

In the 1970s, a group of Armenian engineers led by Professor Abraham Abrahamyan turned the square’s fountains into a light and music show, which was the only such fountain complex in the whole Soviet Union and was considered a real miracle of the combination of light, water and sound.

Fascinated by this wonder, members of the Central Committee of Armenia’s Communist Party in 1978 awarded a state prize in the field of science and engineering to the creative group that worked on the project.

The fountain does its magic each night except Monday, from 9-11 p.m. until the soon-approaching cold weather closes the show for the season.