Akdamar Island
Interesting facts
- A demolition order hit the church in 1951; the novelist Yaşar Kemal raised the alarm, and the ministry halted the work on 25 June 1951.
- The legend of Tamar and her drowned lover inspired a well-known 1891 poem by the Armenian writer Hovhannes Tumanyan.
- The official Turkish name, Akdamar, sounds like the Armenian Aghtamar but means 'white vein'.
- King Gagik's island residence had a harbour admired for its complex hydraulic engineering and a large square palace decorated with frescoes, none of which survives.
- The church's plan follows a design developed centuries earlier in Armenia, best known from the seventh-century church of St Hripsime at Echmiadzin.
- Khachatur III, who died in 1895, was the last Catholicos to hold the see of Aghtamar.
- In April 1915, during the Armenian genocide, the monks of the island were killed, the cathedral was looted and the monastery buildings destroyed.
- The cross placed on the dome in October 2010 is about 2 metres tall and weighs 110 kilograms; it was flown in from the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul.
- Akdamar is the second largest of the four main islands of Lake Van, whose surface lies about 1,912 metres above sea level.
Why it is worth it
Akdamar is a small island in Lake Van — about 0.7 km², ending in a limestone cliff some 80 m high — and on it stands one of the masterpieces of medieval Armenian art, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. In the early 10th century the island was the royal seat of King Gagik I Artsruni of Vaspurakan, who surrounded himself here with a palace, a harbour, streets and gardens. Of all that, only the church survives: built between 915 and 921 by the architect-monk Manuel in warm pinkish volcanic tufa, it is compact — the interior only about 15 by 11.5 m, the dome rising to some 20 m — and set against the vast blue of the lake and the mountains of the far shore.
What makes it famous is the carving that covers its outer walls. Bands of low relief tell Old Testament stories — Adam and Eve, Abraham and Isaac, Jonah and the whale, David and Goliath — alongside Christ, the Virgin and saints. On the west front King Gagik himself holds up a model of the church to offer it to Christ. A continuous vine scroll runs around the building, full of figures picking grapes and of animals, and higher up a frieze of beasts — lions, bears, deer, wild goats, hares, eagles — circles the walls. The style mixes Armenian traditions with echoes of Sasanian and early Islamic court art, and the result is one of the richest sculptural programmes of its age.
From 1116 to 1895 the island was the seat of the Catholicosate of Aghtamar, a branch of the Armenian Church. After 1915 it was abandoned and fell into decay. It was restored between 2005 and 2006 and opened as a museum in 2007; a cross was raised on the dome in 2010, and since then a liturgy has been celebrated in the church once a year. The island's name carries a legend: the princess Tamar's lover drowned in the lake trying to reach her, and his last words, "Akh, Tamar", are said to have given the island its name.
Getting there
Boats run to the island from the pier near Gevaş on the southern shore of Lake Van, roughly 40 km southwest of the city of Van; the crossing of about 3 km takes 20 to 40 minutes. Van, about 35 km from the island as the crow flies, is the nearest city, and the nearest airport is Van Ferit Melen (VAN), about 30 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Akdamar Island, also known as Aghtamar or Akhtamar, is the second largest of the four main islands in Lake Van, in eastern Turkey. About 0.7 km2 in size, it is situated approximately 3 km from the shoreline. At the western end of the island, a hard, grey, limestone cliff rises 80 m above the lake's level. The island declines to the east to a level site where a spring provides ample water.
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