Lake Sevan

Lake Sevan belongs to the Armenian highlands, where a large body of water lies among upland fields and pasture. Fishing supported lakeshore communities, while surrounding land supplied grain and livestock. Seasonal movement connected settled villages with grazing grounds, and paths linked the basin to other parts of Armenia and the Caucasus. The cold highland climate shaped cultivation and the storage of food for winter.

Sevanavank monastery stood on an island in the lake, founded according to an inscription by Princess Mariam in 874. Its churches and manuscripts connect the basin with Armenian religious and cultural life. The traveller Jean Chardin described the monastery and the lake's fish in the seventeenth century. In the early nineteenth century Russian expansion changed the wider region's political framework.