Fortress · Kapan, Kapan community, Syunik
Halidzor Fortress
Հալիձորի բերդ · Halidzor Surb Astvatsatsin Hermitage
A seventeenth-century hermitage on the right bank of the Voghji near Kapan, later a family stronghold of the Melik-Parsadanyans and then rebuilt by David Bek as the main fortress of his rising in Syunik.
Where it is
39.2192, 46.3533
Why go
The complex is small and walled: an irregular circuit with a round tower at one corner and two gateways, dominated by a vaulted hall church with two-storey vaulted buildings against it. When David Bek turned the hermitage into a fortress, the roofs were brought to one level to make a platform for firing on attackers, and he minted coins here. Local tradition holds that he lies beneath one of the tombstones by the church, the one with a single flower carved facing the ground. It suits travellers following the eighteenth-century Armenian risings in Syunik more than anyone looking for scenery alone.
Near Halidzor Fortress
Monastery
Bgheno-Noravank
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.
19 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.
20 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
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.
20 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.
32 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ