Merchants selling bits and bobs, discounted clothing, pots and pans and other sundries along a narrow set of passageways in downtown Yerevan known as Firdous Market, will be moved to other commercial sites in the Armenian capital to make way for what the Yerevan Municipality heralds as ‘urban renovation’.

Yerevan Mayor Taron Margaryan has instructed municipal officials to make the transfer as comfortable as possible for the merchants, a majority of whom had opposed any plan to relocate them.