Handpicked experience · Yerevan
Yerevan, Armenia
The cave beside the road at Areni held a complete winemaking installation from around 4100 BC and, a season later, the oldest known leather shoe — so the vineyards you pass are six thousand years of the same work.
The national mountain seen from the nearest ground it can be seen from
An excavation that reset the date of winemaking worldwide
A valley still growing the grape its ancestors trod
A canyon approach that is half the reason for the final stop
A staircase with nothing under it, still in use
A car for your party alone across a long southern route
A seven-hour private drive south from Yerevan through the Ararat plain and up into Vayots Dzor: Khor Virap on its hill at the border, the wine village of Areni, and Noravank at the head of a red-walled gorge. Three stops, one road, and a thread running through all of it that most itineraries never mention.
The monastery sits on a low rise in flat farmland, and behind it, filling the sky, stands Ararat. This is the closest anyone can stand to the mountain from Armenian soil: the border runs along the plain in front of you and the summit is on the far side of it, in Turkey. The effect is peculiar and entirely deliberate as a place to visit — the national symbol, unmistakable, unreachable. Below the church is the pit where, by tradition, Gregory the Illuminator was held before the king's conversion; you can climb down a ladder into it if you have the nerve for a narrow shaft.
The village is Armenia's wine name, and the reason is not marketing. In a cave beside the road, excavations from 2007 uncovered a complete winemaking installation — a clay vat for treading, a basin, storage jars, grape seeds and skins — dated to roughly 4100 to 4000 BC. It displaced the previous oldest known winery by more than a thousand years. The following season the same cave produced a leather shoe, whole and shaped to a foot, from around 3600 BC: the oldest known.
So the vineyards you drive past are not a revival of a lost practice. They are the same activity, in the same valley, with the same indigenous grape, carried on continuously for six millennia. Very few places can claim that, and this one can prove it.
The last stop is reached by a narrow road up a canyon of sheer red rock that turns almost orange in late light. The monastery is 13th and 14th century, small, and worth the approach on its own. The two-storey church at the far end carries its most photographed feature: narrow stone steps cantilevered straight out of the façade, with no rail and nothing beneath them, leading to the upper chapel. People do still climb them. Whether you should is a matter for your own judgement rather than mine.
Seven hours covers roughly two and a half of driving, so the stops are unhurried. Afternoon light suits the gorge and morning suits Ararat, which tends to cloud over as the day warms. Churches ask for covered shoulders, the ground at all three sites is uneven, and the cave and the pit both involve steps you will not want to take in poor footwear.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Seven hours in all, of which around two and a half are spent driving.
No. The frontier crosses the plain in front of the monastery and the mountain stands on the far side of it.
A deep pit, entered by ladder, associated by tradition with the imprisonment that preceded the kingdom's conversion.
A vat, a basin, jars, and grape remains forming a complete winemaking setup, together with a shoe found the following season.
Roughly six thousand years, dated to about 4100 to 4000 BC, older than any other yet identified.
About 3600 BC, preserved whole, and the oldest leather footwear known anywhere.
Its upper chapel is reached by narrow steps projecting from the front wall, without rail or support beneath.
Morning for the mountain, which often clouds later, and afternoon for the red rock of the canyon.