Church · Mastara, Talin community, Aragatsotn
Saint Hovhannes Church, Mastara
Մաստարայի եկեղեցի · Church of St. John · Mastara Church
Mastara's Saint Hovhannes is an early domed church on a square plan, its four projecting apses carrying a polygonal cupola, in a village near Talin that also keeps a carved 13th-century khachkar.
Where it is
40.4518, 43.8840
Why go
The church has had a varied life: fortified in the 18th century, turned into a farm storehouse under Soviet anti-religious policy in 1935, and reopened for worship in 1993. Inside, 7th-century wall paintings that had been plastered over were rediscovered only in the 21st century. Tradition holds that Gregory the Illuminator placed relics of John the Baptist in its foundations. Look for the Great Mastara Khachkar elsewhere in the village, and combine the visit with Talin Cathedral and Dashtadem Fortress, which lie in the same Talin community.
Base yourself nearby
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.
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.
Near Saint Hovhannes Church, Mastara
Church
Talin Cathedral
A roofless 7th-century cathedral in Talin's cemetery, its dome and outer walls brought down by earthquakes in 1840 and 1931, with fragments of apostle frescoes still visible in the apse.
7 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Fortress
Dashtadem Fortress
A walled stronghold on the southern edge of Dashtadem village, where an octagonal ring of 19th-century bastions encloses an older keep bearing an Arabic inscription of 1174 in Kufic script.
13 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Monastery
Harichavank
A monastery on a promontory between two canyons in Harich village near Artik, pairing a 7th-century church of Saint Grigor with a cathedral built in 1201 by the Zakaryan brothers.
20 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Archaeological site
Archaeological Complex of Horom
Two excavated hilltop citadels near Horom village on the Gyumri–Artik road, with walls up to two metres high above a settlement and cemetery used from the Early Bronze Age to the Urartian period.
23 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ