This paper revisits the most controversial site of the Armenian genocide, the Eastern Anatolia city of Van in 1915 and explores the political agendas and militaristic/strategic decisions that led to the total destruction of this historic Ottoman city. From April to August 1915 Van became a scene for the most tragic occurrences: Van --the hub of the Young Turk - Dashnag alliance after the 1908 constitutional revolution—is interestingly the first place in the empire where inter-communal coexistence entirely and violently collapsed. Van is also the site in the Ottoman Empire where the genocidal intent of the Young Turk government first materialized. It was the ruling elite’s fantasy of an imminent “Armenian conspiracy” that triggered the so-called Armenian Rebellion in April 1915. Van Armenians managed to resist the government’s utterly exterminationist repression after a month long struggle. Soon after, Van became the first Ottoman city to fall under Russian occupation in May 1915, which was preceded by the evacuation of the city by the Ottoman bureaucracy and Muslim inhabitants. At a time when the rest of the Ottoman-Armenians were being subjected to widespread arrests, deadly deportations and unprecedented massacres, Van Armenians were building their own rule in the province under Russian protection. By the end of July 1915 the Russian military authorities unexpectedly ordered the evacuation of the city by the remaining inhabitants, mostly Armenian. As of August 1915 historic Van was an already in ruins and a ghost city. Van was the epicenter of the Armenian genocide, the place where it incubated. Paradoxically, however, genocide as such did not occur in the city/province; as the entire power structure in Van swiftly and radically changed hands between rival empires multiple times in a matter of a few months. Van in 1915 was a distinctive space within the larger devastating landscape of the Armenian genocide, one where myriad experiences, agendas, and actors clashed without any single dynamic or force establishing its unquestioned hegemony. Yet the city Van was the site and victim of a urbicide par excellence. All parties involved in the process targeted the city Van –its infrastructure, residential areas, government buildings, market place, military buildings, communication facilities, and foreign missions. Drawing on Armenian, Ottoman and Russian archival documents, periodicals, memoirs, photographic and cartographic materials and secondary sources my paper investigates the ideological/symbolic and militaristic/strategic decisions that led to urbicide in Van and the memory politics around it.