Monastery · Vedi community, Ararat
Khor Virap Monastery
Խոր Վիրապ · Khor Virap
A walled hilltop monastery on the Ararat plain facing Mount Ararat, built over the pit where tradition holds Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned for 13 years before Armenia adopted Christianity.
Where it is
39.8783, 44.5761
Why go
Two things bring people here. One is the view: the monastery hill is a classic place to photograph Mount Ararat. The other is the descent, by a stairway into the pit, about 6 metres deep, that pilgrims venerate as Gregory's prison. The main church of St Astvatsatsin, the chapel of St Gevorg and the fortress walls date from the 17th century. The hill also lies within the territory of Artaxata, the ancient capital whose citadel stood here. Travellers heading south towards Noravank and Tatev often make it their first stop.
Base yourself nearby
City
Yerevan
Yerevan is Armenia's capital and the base for almost every trip to the country: a low-rise city built largely from pink volcanic tuff, with a dense cafe and dining culture, serious museums and manuscript collections, Soviet-modernist architecture, and monasteries, wine country and Lake Sevan all within a day's return drive.
Wine Village
Areni
Areni is a small village in the dry red-rock landscape of Vayots Dzor, at the centre of Armenia's most important wine area and beside the cave where archaeologists found the world's oldest known winery. It is a base rather than a sight: a place to taste wine, visit the Areni-1 cave and reach the Noravank monastery at the end of its gorge, on the main road south towards Goris and Iran.
Near Khor Virap Monastery
Archaeological site
Dvin Archaeological Site
A large mound between Hnaberd and Verin Dvin on the Ararat plain marking Dvin, a capital of early medieval Armenia and seat of the Catholicos until the Mongols destroyed it.
14 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Archaeological site
Garni Temple
A Greco-Roman colonnaded temple of grey basalt on a cliff promontory above the Azat River gorge, attributed to King Tiridates I and reconstructed by 1975 after a 1679 earthquake brought it down.
29 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Archaeological site
Erebuni Fortress
The hilltop citadel of Arin Berd in south-east Yerevan, founded in 782 BC by the Urartian king Argishti I, whose cuneiform foundation inscription records the name from which Yerevan's own derives.
29 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Archaeological site
Shengavit Settlement
An Early Bronze Age town on a promontory over Lake Yerevan, lived in for more than a thousand years from the fourth millennium BC and enclosed by stone walls two to four metres wide.
32 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ