Although I am not a spiritual person, I deeply admire the structures of ancient Armenian monasteries. While traveling the country during the last ten years I have stopped, cherished, and honored those architectural marvels. Some are renovated which are of no interest to me. Those that were built soon after Armenians accepted Christianity in 301 AD and are partly destroyed fascinate me. Here are some of the photos which either my driver Arman Shahinyan or myself have taken.
St. Khach Church, Aparan, 4th c
The Kasagh Basilica stands at the center of Aparan, some thirty five miles north of Yerevan, with Mount Aragats rising to the west. Scholars date it to the fourth or fifth century, which puts it among the oldest churches still standing in Armenia. The Gntuni princes raised it on ground belonging to the Arshakuni royal palace, in a town then called Kasagh. Large blocks of tuff, a porous volcanic stone in sooty black and gray, make up the walls, which survive to their full height. The carved beams above three of the four doorways are the finest work on the building. In the tenth century a fragment of the True Cross arrived from a monastery in Mokk, the town took the name Aparan, and the church became Surb Khach, Holy Cross. Partly restored in 1877 and shut through the Soviet decades, it was rebuilt by the residents of Aparan and reconsecrated on May 5, 2002.
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Ptghnavank, 6th c
Ptghnavank stands in the village of Ptghni, on the left bank of the Hrazdan River, in the Kotayk Province of Armenia. Armenian church history credits Prince Manuel Amatuni with building it at the close of the sixth century or the opening of the seventh, and ranks it among the earliest and finest of Armenia's domed hall churches. Its representative Israel signed the 606 document which united the bishops and abbots of Armenia. Reliefs carved around a surviving window on the south wall show the Mother of God, Christ, and the apostles. Beside them, a horseman inscribed as Manuel Amatuni shoots an arrow into an animal already wounded. Next to him, a man duels a lion with a spear, thought to be Manuel's son Sahak. The church was partly repaired in 1940. What stands today is a ruin: most of the north wall, the east end of the south wall, one supporting arch, and a few traces of the curved ceiling above. The dome is gone.