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Capital: Yerevan
Population: 3 million+
Language: Armenian
1 – Tatev monastery (also above)
Tatev Monastery is perched on a cliff edge high above the Vorotan gorge in Syunik, southern Armenia, and became the seat of the bishops of Syunik in the 9th–10th centuries, while its university flourished in the 14th century under the scholar Gregory of Tatev, who led it around 1400 and is buried at Tatev.
At Tatev Monastery, look for the Church of Sts Paul and Peter (895–906), the 8 m gavazan of 904, a stone column topped by a cross-stone that sways on a hinged base, as well as the 17th-century Great Hermitage on the gorge floor below and Satan’s Bridge, a natural travertine bridge over the Vorotan.
The Wings of Tatev cable car, 5.75 km long, set the Guinness World Record for the longest non-stop double-track cable car when it opened in October 2010, crossing the gorge to Tatev more than 300 m above the Vorotan.
2 – Khor Virap Monastery
Khor Virap stands on a hill on the Ararat plain beside the Turkish border, where tradition says Gregory the Illuminator was held for about 13 years in a pit before curing King Trdat III, whose conversion made Armenia, by tradition, the first state to adopt Christianity, in 301, though many historians prefer about 314.
At Khor Virap, a steep ladder leads down into the pit beneath the chapel of St Gevorg, beside the Church of Surb Astvatsatsin of 1662, with the classic view of Mount Ararat, in Turkey since 1921 but on Armenia’s coat of arms, which the Belfast-born statesman James Bryce climbed in 1876.
Khor Virap rises among the ruins of Artaxata, Armenia’s ancient capital, and both Strabo and Plutarch claim that Hannibal helped to plan the city, a story that may be legend.
3 – Geghard Monastery
Geghard Monastery sits in the Upper Azat gorge east of Yerevan, where tradition links its founding to Gregory the Illuminator at a sacred spring in a cave in the 4th century, and its main church, the Katoghike, was finished in 1215, with UNESCO listing Geghard and the Upper Azat Valley in 2000.
In the 13th century the Proshyan princes had churches and tombs cut out of the living rock at Geghard, so expect rock-hewn chambers, cross-stones carved into the walls, the cave spring and acoustics famed for making any singing ring out.
Geghard means “spear”, after the Holy Lance said to have pierced Christ and to have been kept here for centuries, though the relic has been at Etchmiadzin since the early 19th century, and rival lances, including one in Vienna, claim the same honour.
4 – The Cascade
The Cascade is a giant stairway in central Yerevan, climbing a slope earmarked in Alexander Tamanyan’s 1924 city plan, designed in the early 1970s by Jim Torosyan, Aslan Mkhitaryan and Sargis Gurzadyan and begun in 1980, until work stalled after the 1988 earthquake and the Soviet collapse.
Climb the Cascade’s 572 steps or ride the indoor escalators through the Cafesjian Center for the Arts, funded by the Armenian-American collector Gerard Cafesjian and opened in 2009, past Fernando Botero’s Cat and Roman Warrior as well as works by Barry Flanagan, the Welsh-born sculptor of bronze hares who settled in Dublin and became an Irish citizen.
Yerevan, spread out below the Cascade, began as the Urartian fortress of Erebuni, founded by King Argishti I in 782 BC according to a cuneiform inscription, which makes the city older than Rome’s traditional founding date of 753 BC.
5 – Temple of Garni
The Temple of Garni stands on a triangular promontory above the Azat gorge, usually dated by a Greek inscription to about 77 AD under King Tiridates I, and is often described as the only standing Greco-Roman colonnaded building in the former Soviet Union.
See the 24 Ionic columns of grey basalt at the Temple of Garni, the Roman bathhouse whose mosaic of the sea deities Oceanus and Thalassa carries a Greek inscription usually read as “we worked without receiving anything”, and the Symphony of Stones, a wall of natural basalt columns in the gorge below.
The Temple of Garni collapsed in an earthquake in 1679 and was rebuilt in 1969–75 under the architect Alexander Sahinian, using the surviving stones with new basalt for the missing parts, while some scholars argue it was a 2nd-century royal tomb rather than a temple at all.
6 – Zorats Karer
Zorats Karer, also called Karahunj, is a field of 223 numbered standing stones on a plateau near Sisian in Syunik, about 80 of them pierced with holes, and a 2000 survey by archaeologists from the University of Munich found it was mainly a burial ground from the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age.
Wander among the stones of Zorats Karer, many leaning or fallen, and peer through the holes that some claim line up with the sun and stars, while the name itself means “Stones of the Army” in Armenian.
Zorats Karer is no 7,500-year-old observatory, as the radiophysicist Paris Herouni claimed, because archaeologists date it to no earlier than about 2000 BC, younger than Stonehenge, and the supposed link between the names “Karahunj” and “Stonehenge” has been widely dismissed.
7 – Goshavank
Goshavank stands in the village of Gosh in Tavush Province, about 15 km east of Dilijan, founded in 1188 to replace the monastery of Getik, destroyed by an earthquake, and renamed after the scholar Mkhitar Gosh, who died in 1213.
At Goshavank, see the Church of St Astvatsatsin (1191–96), the two-storey book depository begun in 1241 and topped with a belfry in 1291, as well as a lace-like cross-stone carved by master Poghos in 1291, while a forest trail passes little Gosh Lake.
The law code of Mkhitar Gosh, the scholar behind Goshavank, was written in the late 12th century and travelled a long way, becoming the basis of the statute of the Armenian community in Lviv, approved by King Sigismund I of Poland in 1519.
8 – Areni-1 Cave
Areni-1 Cave is a three-chambered cave above the Arpa River near the village of Areni in Vayots Dzor, where excavations from 2007 uncovered the oldest known winery, dated to about 4100–4000 BC.
The winery at Areni-1 has a clay pressing basin about a metre long draining into a fermentation vat, with storage jars, grape seeds, skins and dried vines around it, and because it sat among graves, the wine may have been used in rituals for the dead.
Areni-1 Cave also gave up a 5,500-year-old shoe made from a single piece of cowhide, found in 2008 under a broken jar with grass packed inside, probably to keep its shape, as well as what researchers called the oldest known human brain in the Old World, about 6,000 years old.
9 – Tsitsernakaberd
Tsitsernakaberd, the “Swallows’ Fortress”, is a hill above the Hrazdan gorge in Yerevan and the site of Armenia’s memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide that began in 1915, completed in 1967, two years after mass demonstrations in Yerevan on the 50th anniversary, 24 April 1965.
At Tsitsernakaberd, twelve inclined stone slabs ring an eternal flame beside a 44 m stele, with a museum opened in 1995 for the 80th anniversary, and on Remembrance Day, 24 April, crowds lay flowers around the flame.
Estimates of those killed range from about 600,000 to 1.5 million, the figure given by Armenia and many historians, while on 5 December 2015 a memorial khachkar blending Celtic and Armenian crosses, carved with shamrocks and grapes, was dedicated at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.
10 – Etchmiadzin Cathedral
Etchmiadzin Cathedral stands in Vagharshapat, about 20 km west of Yerevan, where Gregory the Illuminator founded a church in the early 4th century, traditionally 301–303, over a pagan fire temple, and it has been the Mother See of the Armenian Apostolic Church since 1441, often regarded as one of the oldest cathedrals in the world.
The cruciform domed plan of Etchmiadzin Cathedral dates from a rebuild of 483–84 under Vahan Mamikonian, with the dome restored from 1627 and the bell tower built in the 1650s, while its museums hold the Holy Lance from Geghard and a relic said to come from Noah’s Ark.
The name Etchmiadzin means “the descent of the Only-Begotten”, after the story set down by the 5th-century historian Agathangelos, in which Gregory saw Christ descend and strike the ground with a golden hammer to mark the spot, and the cathedral shares its UNESCO listing of 2000 with St Hripsime, St Gayane and the ruins of Zvartnots.
Interesting extra – The Snake Castle (in Turkey)
Yılankale, the Snake Castle, is a fortress probably built by the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia in the 12th–13th centuries on a limestone ridge above the Ceyhan river, about 37 km east of Adana and some 840 km south-west of Yerevan, a reminder that for almost three centuries, from 1080 to 1375, an Armenian state stood on the Mediterranean.
Horseshoe-shaped towers and three walled baileys climb the ridge at Yılankale, with an Armenian chapel in the upper bailey, and on a clear day other castles can be picked out across the Cilician plain.
Above the gate of Yılankale a relief shows a seated king flanked by two lions, with a cross above his head, probably Het’um I or Het’um II, while the Turkish name recalls the Shahmaran, the half-woman, half-snake queen of legend.