Wings of Tatev — aerial tramway
Armineaghayan · CC BY-SA 3.0

Wings of Tatev

  • 2 min read
  • 39.416° N 46.297° E

Interesting facts

  • The two cabins reach speeds of about 37 km/h, crossing the full 5.7 km in a single section without any intermediate station.
  • Building the tramway and its facilities cost more than 20 million US dollars, raised through the Tatev Revival project conceived by Ruben Vardanyan and Veronika Zonabend.
  • The line carried its millionth passenger within about a decade of opening, with a record of nearly 156,000 riders in 2019.
  • Tatev Monastery once had around 1,000 monks and owned 47 villages outright, collecting tithes from hundreds more across the region.
  • The monastery's Gavazan is a 9th-century stone column about 8 metres tall built on a hinged base, so that it rocks during tremors without falling.
  • The main church of Saints Paul and Peter was built between 895 and 906; an earthquake in 1931 brought down its dome and the monastery bell tower.
  • The University of Tatev taught scripture, calligraphy and music, and flourished under the theologian Grigor Tatevatsi until an invasion in 1434 ended it.
  • Each cabin holds about 25 to 30 passengers, and the line can move roughly 240 people an hour between Halidzor and Tatev.

Why it is worth it

Wings of Tatev is an aerial tramway that crosses the gorge of the Vorotan River in southern Armenia, linking the village of Halidzor with Tatev Monastery on the far rim. The line is 5,752 metres long, built as a single section divided by towers into four spans, and when it opened on 16 October 2010 it entered the Guinness World Records as the longest non-stop double-track cable car. Two cabins, each carrying some two dozen passengers and an attendant, shuttle back and forth in opposite directions, one arriving as the other departs. At its highest the cabin hangs about 320 metres above the floor of the gorge.

The ride takes some 11 to 15 minutes, against around forty minutes on the steep serpentine road that winds down into the gorge and up again. The longest span, about 2.7 km, is also the most spectacular: the cabin glides out over the void with the monastery in full view, a cluster of stone churches and walls standing on a basalt plateau at the very edge of the abyss. The tramway was built by the Doppelmayr Garaventa group as part of the Tatev Revival project, and its income goes towards restoring the monastery and supporting the local community.

The destination is the reason the line exists. Tatev Monastery dates from the 9th century and is one of the best known monasteries in Armenia; in the 14th and 15th centuries it housed the University of Tatev, a centre of scholarship, manuscript copying and miniature painting. Local tradition tells that the builder of its church, falling from the dome into the gorge, cried out for wings, "Ta tev" in Armenian, and the name of both monastery and tramway echoes that story.

Getting there

The lower station is at Halidzor in Syunik province, about 11 km from the town of Goris; Tatev lies some 250 km south of Yerevan. The nearest airport in Armenia is Zvartnots International Airport (EVN) near Yerevan, about 182 km away in a straight line.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Armenia 13The Most Spectacular Cable Cars 13The Greatest Engineering Wonders 271

From the encyclopaedia

Wings of Tatev is a 5.7 km (3.5 mi) cableway between Halidzor and the Tatev monastery in Armenia. It is the longest reversible aerial tramway built in only one section, and holds the record for Longest non-stop double track cable car. Construction was finished on 16 October 2010.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

39.41637, 46.29682per Wikidata