40°16′26″N 44°37′32″E / 40.27389°N 44.62556°E / 40.27389; 44.62556 Abovyan or Abovian (Armenian: Աբովյան [ɑbɔvˈjɑn]) is a town and urban municipal community in Armenia within the Kotayk Province. It is located 16 kilometres (10 miles) northeast of Yerevan and 32 kilometres (20 miles) southeast of the province centre Hrazdan. As of the 2022 census, the population of the town was 46,434.

With a motorway and railway running through the city connecting Yerevan with the areas of the northeast, Abovyan is considered a satellite city of the Armenian capital. Therefore, Abovyan is generally known as the "northern gate of Yerevan".

Abovyan covers an area of around 11 square kilometres (4.2 square miles).

The site of present-day Abovyan was previously occupied by a small village known as Elar. One folk tradition connects the name Elar with the legend of Ara the Handsome: the Assyrian queen Semiramis is said to have brought the body of the murdered Armenian king to the village and ordered the inhabitants to shout "el Ara", meaning "arise, Ara" in Armenian, from which the name Elar supposedly originated. On October 12, 1961, Soviet Armenian authorities renamed the village Abovyan after the prominent Armenian writer Khachatur Abovian. The decision followed an earlier suggestion to rename the community made by Anastas Mikoyan during his 1954 visit to Armenia.

During excavations in the 1860s led by historian Mesrop Smbatiants, the remains of a 2nd-millennium BC Cyclopean fortress, an ancient cemetery and old shelters with several objects from the three stages of the Bronze Age were found near Abovyan.

Smbatiants also found an 8th-century BC Urartian cuneiform inscription left by King Argishti I, referring to the conquest of the "land of Darani" (the pre-Urartian name of the modern-day Abovyan area). The excavations led by Smbatiants revealed that the area of modern-day Abovyan was inhabited starting from the end of the 4th century BC. During the ancient Kingdom of Armenia, the western area of modern-day Abovyan was part of the Kotayk canton of Ayrarat province, while the eastern area was part of the Mazaz canton of the same province.

Between the 5th and 7th centuries AD, the region was granted to the Amatuni Armenian noble dynasty.

After the Seljuk invasion of Armenia, the area became known as Elar. According to the 13th-century Armenian historian Stepanos Orbelian, Elar became part of the Kingdom of Georgia. Later, the region of Elar was granted to prince Liparit Orbeli of the Orbelian Dynasty by prince Ivane Mkhargrdzeli.