Monastery · Hayravank, Gavar community, Gegharkunik
Hayravank Monastery
Հայրավանք
On a rocky cliff above Lake Sevan's south-western shore, Hayravank groups a late 9th-century church, a 10th-century chapel and a 12th-century gavit among khachkars and old gravestones.
Where it is
40.4327, 45.1079
Why go
Look up inside the gavit: its cupola is laid in alternating reddish and grey tuff in a harlequin pattern, cited as an early example of the polychrome masonry later common in Armenian churches. The church itself is a quatrefoil plan whose drum and dome were rebuilt in a restoration of 1977–89. In the Middle Ages the monastery was a centre for copying and illustrating manuscripts. It suits travellers after quiet lake views and a smaller site than Sevanavank, and ruins of cyclopean fortresses can be seen from the monastery.
Near Hayravank Monastery
Monastery
Sevanavank
Two small cross-plan churches, Surb Arakelots and Surb Astvatsatsin, on a peninsula at Lake Sevan's north-western shore that was an island until Soviet-era draining lowered the lake by about 20 metres.
17 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Mountain
Mount Azhdahak
The highest summit of the Gegham range, an extinct volcano rising to 3,597 metres on the Kotayk–Gegharkunik boundary, with a small snowmelt lake in its summit crater.
27 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Church
St Thaddeus Church, Ddmashen
Ddmashen's 7th-century church of St Thaddeus the Apostle, a large cruciform church on a rectangular plan whose dome now rests on a sixteen-sided drum rebuilt in 1907 after earthquake damage.
29 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Monastery
Goshavank
A monastery in the village of Gosh, east of Dilijan, rebuilt under the scholar and lawgiver Mkhitar Gosh and famous for a thirteenth-century khachkar carved by the master Poghos.
34 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ