Sevanavank โ€” monastery
Image by Taken from Pixabay

Sevanavank

  • 1 min read
  • 40.564ยฐ N 45.011ยฐ E

Interesting facts

  • In the 920s King Ashot II, the Iron, took refuge on the island, and his archers firing from boats routed a much larger Arab-led army on the shore.
  • Besides being a monastery, the island was a medieval fortress, and remains of its walls can still be traced on the western side.
  • The monastery is also known as Mariamashen, meaning built by Mariam, after its royal founder.
  • Princess Mariam was the widow of Prince Vasak, and she built the churches in memory of her late husband.
  • Construction was guided by the ascetic monk Mashtots Yeghivardetsi, who later became Catholicos and compiled a book of church rites.
  • Mkhitar Sebastatsi studied here before going on to found the Mekhitarist order of Armenian Catholic monks in Venice.
  • According to Jean-Marie Chopin, the rule here forbade meat, wine, youths and women.
  • Parts of the ruined gavit's carved wooden structure are kept in the History Museum of Armenia in Yerevan.
  • The churches were restored in 1956 and 1957, and a seminary was founded at the monastery in 1990.

Why it is worth it

Sevanavank stands on a narrow rocky headland above Lake Sevan, the great mountain lake of Armenia lying at about 1,900 metres. Two small stone churches with octagonal drums and conical roofs crown the ridge, with the wide blue water and the mountains of the far shore behind them โ€” one of the best-known views in the country.

The monastery was founded in 874 by Princess Mariam, a daughter of the Bagratid ruler Ashot I. Both surviving churches, Surb Arakelots (the Holy Apostles) and Surb Astvatsatsin (the Holy Mother of God), follow a compact cruciform plan topped by an eight-sided drum. Beside them are the ruins of a gavit, an entrance hall whose roof once rested on six wooden columns. For long periods Sevanavank was a place of strict discipline for monks of Etchmiadzin who had broken the rules; the French traveller Jean-Marie Chopin, who visited in 1830, described the ascetic life there, and manuscripts were still being copied by hand around 1850. A carved walnut door from the monastery, dated 1486, is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

When the monastery was built, it stood on the only large island in the lake. From the 1930s, Soviet water projects drew so much water from Sevan for irrigation and hydropower that the level fell by about 20 metres, and the island became joined to the shore as a peninsula. The monastery is again an active religious site, and a seminary, the Vaskenian Theological Academy, occupies newer buildings on the northern side of the peninsula.

Getting there

Sevanavank is on the north-western shore of Lake Sevan, about 5 km from the town of Sevan, which lies on the M4 highway roughly 60 km north-east of Yerevan. The nearest airport is Zvartnots International Airport (EVN), about 70 km away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Armenia 13The Most Beautiful Monasteries in Armenia 6The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Armenia 9The Most Beautiful Ancient Sacred Places 18The Most Remarkable Ancient Places 78The Most Beautiful Monasteries 79The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

Sevanavank is a monastic complex located on a peninsula at the northwestern shore of Lake Sevan in the Gegharkunik Province of Armenia, not far from the town of Sevan. Initially the monastery was built at the southern shore of a small island. After the artificial draining of Lake Sevan, which started in the era of Joseph Stalin, the water level fell about 20 metres, and the island transformed into a peninsula. At the southern shore of this newly created peninsula, a guesthouse of the Writers Union of Armenia was built. The eastern shore is occupied by the Armenian president's summer residence, while the monastery's still active seminary moved to newly constructed buildings at the northern shore of the peninsula.

Wikipedia ยท CC BY-SA 4.0

40.56392, 45.01081per Wikidata