The captivating European country that’s still off-radar

It’s golden hour in the mountain town of Dilijan in Armenia. I have wandered into the steep back streets, which are lined with traditional houses, all wooden fretwork balconies and walls of multi-pane glass, the softening sunshine turning the latter into a more benign variety of disco ball.

Most of these places look picturesquely ramshackle, like something from a fairy tale or Miss Havisham’s house. A good number of them may — or may not, it can be difficult to tell — be uninhabited. Like Georgia, from which I have just arrived, the country has been suffering from population decline since declaring independence from Russia in 1991, many young people leaving to work abroad.

The residence I find myself lingering in front of admiringly, however, a pale pink doll’s house of a place, is definitely lived in. The building is only just keeping it together but the front garden is immaculately tended, a ravishment of peonies. After a couple of minutes an old man appears from nowhere with a bunch of his flowers and thrusts them into my hand. His wife, I then see, is watching and smiling from a window.