Monasteries & Churches

In Geghard a sung note does not stop when the singer does. The hall is cut entirely from the surrounding rock, and what you hear comes back out of the mountain. No guidebook prepares you for it, because acoustics cannot be photographed.

We visit these places one at a time. Geghard in the upper Azat valley, Noravank in Vayots Dzor against its red cliff, Tatev in Syunik above the gorge, Khor Virap on the Ararat plain with the mountain behind it, Haghpat and Sanahin in Lori. Three in one day is possible and rarely a good idea.

Timing turns the same place into two different ones. On a weekday morning Noravank is empty and you hear your own steps on the stone. On a Sunday morning it is full, there is singing, candles burn by the hundred, and you stand among families who did not come for the architecture. Both are worth doing. Say beforehand which you want and we build the day around it.

Against the walls stand khachkars, Armenian cross-stones, each one unique and often raised for someone who died. From two metres away they look alike; from thirty centimetres every one has different interlacing.

These are working churches. Covered shoulders and knees, a headscarf where one is laid out, no flash, no conversation during a service. Photography is allowed almost everywhere, and asking costs ten seconds.

Inside it is cold. In August you stand in the courtyard at thirty degrees and five minutes later in a room that has not been warm for a thousand years. A jacket belongs in the day pack even in high summer.

The floors are worn basalt, polished mirror-smooth in places by centuries of footwear, and in the side chambers no light is burning. So we bring a torch and go ahead with it.