Geghard

Geghard sits at the head of the Azat gorge, where the valley closes into walls of rock, and much of the monastery is not built so much as carved. Some of its churches are hollowed entirely out of the cliff, others are half free-standing and half cut into the mountain, and the rock faces all around are pitted with monks' cells and covered with khachkars, the carved cross-stones of Armenia. The gorge and the monastery are listed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Tradition says Gregory the Illuminator founded a monastery here in the fourth century at a cave spring that had been sacred before Christianity, which is why it was first called Ayrivank, the Monastery of the Cave. That early house was sacked in the tenth century and nothing of it survives. The present complex took shape in the thirteenth century: the main church, the Katoghike, was built in 1215 under the Zakarid brothers Zakare and Ivane, generals of Queen Tamar of Georgia, and soon afterwards the Proshian princes bought the monastery and paid for the rock-cut halls that made it famous. Its later name, Geghardavank, the Monastery of the Spear, comes from the relic said to be the lance that pierced Christ, brought according to legend by the Apostle Thaddeus; the spear is now kept at Echmiadzin.

The carving is the reason to come. Above the south portal of the Katoghike a lion attacks an ox, and the tympanum is filled with pomegranate trees and vines. The gavit in front of it, finished by 1225, has four heavy columns and a central dome of stalactite vaulting with an opening to the sky, the finest example of the technique in Armenia. Behind it the rock-cut church of the 1240s, the Avazan, still has the spring running through it, and higher up the Proshian family chambers bear their coat of arms, an eagle gripping a lamb, cut into the living rock, with a funerary hall carved in 1288.

Getting there

Geghard is at the end of a paved road up the Azat valley, roughly 35 to 40 km east of Yerevan by road, and about 10 km up the valley from the temple of Garni, with which it is usually visited. The nearest town is Abovyan, about 22 km away. Zvartnots International Airport (EVN) near Yerevan is about 36 km away.