Khor Virap
Interesting facts
- The monastery lies only about 100 metres from the sealed Armenian–Turkish border, with the Turkish town of Aralık directly across the Arax river.
- Gregory's cell is the farther of two pits beneath the St George chapel, reached through an unmarked hole, a short stair and a long ladder.
- Before any church stood here, the hill served as a royal prison of Artashat, the capital founded by King Artashes I around 180 BC.
- Ancient writers linked the founding of Artashat to Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who took refuge in Armenia while fleeing Rome.
- In 1255 the scholar Vardan Areveltsi founded a school of higher learning at the monastery, which became a centre of Armenian education.
- Unusually for an Armenian church, the St George chapel over the pit is aligned northwest to southeast instead of the customary east to west.
- Archaeologists have been excavating the thirteen surrounding hills since 1970, uncovering coins, pottery and mud-brick walls of ancient Artashat.
- Pilgrims traditionally release doves from the walls in the hope that they will fly across the border to Mount Ararat.
- Visitors to the hill have included the botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort around 1700, James Bryce in 1876 and Pope Francis in 2016.
Why it is worth it
Khor Virap stands on a low hill above the Ararat plain, and on a clear day it has one of the great backdrops of any church in the world: the snow-capped double summit of Mount Ararat rising beyond the vineyards and fields on the other side of the Arax river. The monastery occupies part of the site of Artaxata, the ancient Armenian capital, and its name means "deep pit" — a reference to the event that made it sacred.
According to Armenian tradition, King Tiridates III imprisoned Gregory the Illuminator here for thirteen years in an underground dungeon, where he survived thanks to a Christian woman who secretly dropped bread to him. When the king fell into madness, it was Gregory who was said to have cured him, and Tiridates converted; Armenia's adoption of Christianity as a state religion is traditionally dated to 301. The pit that pilgrims climb down into today is about 6 metres deep and just over 4 metres wide, beneath the small chapel of St George.
A first chapel was built on the site in 642 by Catholicos Nerses III, known as the Builder. The larger church of the Holy Mother of God, Surb Astvatsatsin, went up in 1662 around the remains of the older chapel, and the whole complex is enclosed by walls. It remains one of Armenia's most visited pilgrimage places, used for baptisms, weddings and the traditional matagh sacrifice, and the low walls around it are the favourite place to photograph Ararat, especially early in the morning.
Getting there
The monastery stands near the village of Lusarat in Ararat Province, about 9 km from Artashat and roughly 43 km by road from Yerevan. Zvartnots International Airport (EVN), which serves Yerevan, is about 34 km away. Minibuses from Yerevan's southern bus station, behind the main railway station, run towards Khor Virap and stop at the turn-off, a 15-minute walk from the monastery; many visitors come by taxi or on a day tour.
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From the encyclopaedia
Khor Virap is an Armenian monastery located in the Ararat Plain in Armenia, near the border with Turkey, about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of Artashat, Ararat Province, in the territory of ancient Artaxata. The monastery was host to a theological seminary and was the residence of the Catholicos, the head of the Armenian Church.
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