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Church · Gyumri, Gyumri, Shirak

Cathedral of the Holy Martyrs

Սրբոց Նահատակաց եկեղեցի · Cathedral of the Holy Cross

The Armenian Catholic cathedral on Gyumri's Victory Avenue, built from 2010 and consecrated in September 2015 to a design by architect Hakob Jivanyan that draws on medieval Armenian forms such as Zvartnots.

Where it is

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40.7818, 43.8454

Why go

Unlike the historic churches around Vardanants Square, this is a 21st-century building, and the interest lies in how its architect reworked medieval Armenian forms into a new circular cathedral with a belfry at the entrance. It is the cathedral of the Armenian Catholic Ordinariate for Eastern Europe. Planned under the name Holy Cross, it was dedicated instead to the Holy Martyrs, honouring the victims of the Armenian Genocide canonised as saints. Pope Francis visited in June 2016. The Sergey Merkurov House-Museum stands close by on the same avenue.

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City

Gyumri

Gyumri is Armenia's second city and its most architecturally distinctive, built from black and red volcanic tuff in a nineteenth-century merchant style that survives across more than a thousand buildings in the protected Kumayri district. It has a strong independent cultural identity, a reputation for humour and craft that Armenians take seriously, and a train link from Yerevan that makes it one of the easiest places in the country to reach without a car.

Near Cathedral of the Holy Martyrs