Monastery · Tatev, Syunik
Tatev Monastery
Տաթևի վանք · Tatev
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.
Where it is
39.3794, 46.2500
Why go
The main church of Saints Paul and Peter dates from 895–906; beside it stand Saint Grigor, rebuilt in 1295, and the gate church of Saint Astvatsatsin from 1087. Near the churches is the Gavazan, a stone pillar designed to respond to the slightest movement of the ground. The 1931 earthquake badly damaged the main church and its belfry, and restoration has continued in stages since the 1980s. Crossing the gorge by cable car is a large part of the experience, though the road also reaches the monastery. The Tatevi Anapat hermitage lies on the valley floor below, and Tatev pairs with Goris, Sisian and Zorats Karer on a Syunik trip.
Near Tatev Monastery
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.
1 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
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.
10 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.
17 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Fortress
Halidzor Fortress
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.
20 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ