Ani

Ani stands on a triangular plateau between the gorge of the Akhurian and a dry ravine, once the capital of the Armenian Bagratid kings and a rich city on the routes between Anatolia, Persia and the Caucasus. Its walls enclosed palaces, markets, mills and workshops of metalworkers, potters and scribes. The cathedral begun in 989 under Smbat II and finished in 1001 was designed by the master builder Trdat, whose pointed arches and clustered piers seem to anticipate Gothic architecture.

The Mongols sacked Ani in 1236, but under Georgian overlordship the Zakarid princes restored its fortunes, and wealthy merchants such as Tigran Honents endowed churches such as his, completed in 1215. After the last Ilkhan died in 1335, Mongol factions fought for it while Georgia held the city, and Timur captured it in the 1380s. The great earthquake of 1319 had already brought down the dome of the cathedral, and Armenians began leaving for new settlements. Kara Koyunlu made Ani their capital, then moved to Yerevan, and in 1441 the Armenian Catholicosate settled at Etchmiadzin. The Ottomans took Ani from the Safavids in 1579. A small town survived inside the walls until the middle of the seventeenth century, and the site was empty by 1735, when the last monks left the monastery in the Virgin's Fortress, Kizkale.