Vank Cathedral

Interesting facts

In the 1630s Archbishop Khachatur Kesaratsi set up the first printing press in Iran at the monastery, and its first book, a Psalter, appeared in 1638.

The museum keeps that early press equipment together with the first book ever printed in Iran.

The museum displays a single human hair engraved with a line of scripture, made in 1974 by Armenian artist Vahram Hakobian and readable only through a microscope.

Much of the painted interior is attributed to the Armenian master Minas, who is said to have trained with European artists in Aleppo.

The freestanding belfry in the courtyard was added in 1702, nearly four decades after the main rebuilding was finished.

Among those buried in the courtyard are foreigners who died in Isfahan, including the English officer Sir George Malcolm and the surgeon Andrew Jukes.

The cathedral was registered as a national heritage monument of Iran in 1932.

Why it is worth it

From the outside, the Holy Saviour Cathedral, known to everyone in Isfahan as Vank, the Armenian word for monastery, could almost pass for a mosque: a plain brick building with a pointed Persian dome, standing behind high walls in the quarter of New Julfa. Step inside and it becomes one of the most richly decorated churches in the Middle East, every surface covered in frescoes, gilded carving and tiles, a fusion of Armenian Christian painting and Safavid Persian ornament that exists nowhere else in quite this form.

New Julfa owes its existence to Shah Abbas I, who in the early seventeenth century forcibly resettled hundreds of thousands of Armenians from Julfa on the Araxes and gave them land beside his new capital, valuing them as merchants and craftsmen. Work on the cathedral began in 1606, and between 1655 and 1664 it was substantially rebuilt under Archbishop David. Its plan reflects that double world: a domed hall like a Persian mosque, joined to a raised chancel and semi-octagonal apse in the manner of a Western church.

The interior is the reward. The dome, painted in blue and gold, tells the story of the Creation and of Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden, while bands of paintings on the walls show scenes from the life of Christ and the sufferings of Armenian martyrs, framed by gilded floral panels and tiles that could belong in a Safavid palace. In the courtyard a tall freestanding belfry rises among old gravestones. The adjoining museum keeps more than 700 manuscripts, the 1606 decree of Shah Abbas granting the Armenians their land, and a quiet, careful exhibition on the Armenian Genocide of 1915, which gives the visit a sober close.

Getting there

Vank Cathedral stands in the Armenian quarter of New Julfa in Isfahan, about 2.6 km from the city centre, and is easily reached by taxi or on foot from the historic bridges over the Zayanderud. Isfahan Shahid Beheshti International Airport (IFN) is about 25 km away.

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Vank Cathedral

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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