Mount Ararat that the biblical passage implies that the ark rested upon a "mountain in the district which the Hebrews knew as Ararat, or Armenia", wrote in an 1878 article for the Royal Geographical Society that the biblical writer must have had Mt. Ararat in mind because it is so "very much higher, more conspicuous, and more majestic than any other summit in Armenia." During his visit to Armenia in 2001 Pope John Paul II declared in his homily in Yerevan's St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral: "We are close to Mount Ararat, where tradition says that the Ark of Noah came to
Ararat, Armenia including an indoor sports hall, indoor swimming pool, billiards saloon, mini-football ground and other facilities. The retired Olympic cyclist Arsen Ghazaryan is a native of Ararat. Ararat is twinned with Ararat, Armenia Ararat (), is a town and urban municipal community in the Ararat Province of Armenia, located on the Yerevan-Nakhchivan highway, southeast of the capital Yerevan and south of the provincial centre Artashat. In the 2011 census, the population of the town was 20,235. As per the 2016 official estimate, the population is around 20,300. The town was officially named Ararat in 1947 after the nearby biblical Mountains of