Monastery · Syunik
Bgheno-Noravank
Բղենո-Նորավանք
Reduced to a single small church dated 1062, this Syunik monastery stands on a triangular promontory above wooded gorges east of Bardzravan, its walls carved with ornamental borders and biblical reliefs.
Where it is
39.3882, 46.3601
Why go
Only one small church remains, so the value here lies in close looking rather than scale. Its carved borders and biblical reliefs are what set it apart, and the wooded-gorge setting gives the short visit its character. The writer Aksel Bakunts rediscovered the ruins in the 1920s while working as an agronomist. It suits travellers with a particular interest in medieval Armenian relief carving, as an excursion from Goris.
Near Bgheno-Noravank
Monastery
Great Hermitage of Tatev
A walled hermitage where the Tatev stream joins the Vorotan river, begun in 1660 to replace an earlier hermitage lost to an earthquake, and screened from view by walnut and fig trees.
9 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Monastery
Tatev Monastery
Tatev's churches and defensive walls stand on a basalt promontory above the Vorotan gorge in Syunik, reached by road or by the Wings of Tatev cable car from Halidzor, and in the 14th century housed a noted university.
10 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Historic site
Old Goris (Kyores) Cave Dwellings
The abandoned cave quarter of Kyores beside modern Goris, on the left bank of the Vararakn river, where the original town grew in and around a natural cave system.
13 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Historic site
Old Khndzoresk
An abandoned cave village cut into the slopes of a gorge near Goris, with around 2,000 rock dwellings and a swinging footbridge across the ravine.
14 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ