Handpicked experience · Yerevan
Yerevan, Armenia
Sanahin's name is a boast that it is older than the monastery three kilometres away — and the same village produced the man whose initial is the M in MiG, with a fighter parked below the churches.
Two rival foundations seen in one day, as they were meant to be compared
Carved cross-stones among the finest anywhere in the country
A Cold War aircraft standing minutes from a medieval foundation
A basilica several centuries older than either monastery
A writer's village that most itineraries leave out
Canyon scenery that justifies the length of the drive
A long private day north from Yerevan into Lori, the wooded canyon country near the Georgian border. Haghpat and Sanahin are the reason most people make the drive; Odzun and Dsegh are what make it worth eleven or twelve hours rather than a rushed six. It is a lot of road, and the province repays it.
Sanahin and Haghpat stand about three kilometres apart on opposite sides of a gorge, and they have been in competition since the tenth century. The name Sanahin is the evidence: in Armenian it reads, more or less, as this one is older than that one — a claim staked directly at the neighbours. Both were inscribed together as World Heritage in 1996, which settles nothing and probably annoys them equally.
They are not variations on one building. Sanahin kept a scriptorium and a teaching academy; its covered galleries and book depository are the working parts of a medieval university. Haghpat sits higher, with a freestanding belfry and a view down the canyon that explains why the site was chosen. Between them they hold some of the best carved cross-stones in the country.
In the village below Sanahin monastery there is a museum with a MiG-21 standing outside it. This is not a Soviet-era decoration dropped at random. Artem Mikoyan, born in this village in August 1905, is the Mi in MiG — the design bureau behind the Soviet Union's fighter aircraft. His elder brother Anastas became one of the most durable politicians in Moscow. A tenth-century monastery and a jet fighter, within walking distance of each other, both produced by the same small village.
Odzun's basilica is far older than the monasteries, from somewhere between the fifth and seventh centuries, and stands on an open shelf above the valley with a carved funerary monument beside it. Dsegh is quieter still: a hill village that produced Hovhannes Tumanyan, the poet most Armenians can quote from memory, whose house is kept as a museum. Neither is a spectacle. Both explain something about the province that the monasteries do not.
Expect five to six hours in the vehicle across the day. The road climbs and descends steeply into the gorge, which is slow but scenic, and the canyon holds cloud when Yerevan is clear. Monastery floors are worn stone, several sites involve steps, and the churches ask for covered shoulders. Autumn colour here is exceptional and the roads can be difficult in winter.
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.
Eleven to twelve hours, of which five to six are spent in the vehicle.
Roughly that this one is older than that one, a claim aimed squarely at the monastery across the gorge.
About three kilometres, on opposing sides of the valley.
They were inscribed jointly as World Heritage in 1996.
Because the co-founder of the design bureau that built it was born there, and the family museum keeps one outside.
Artem Mikoyan, born in the village in August 1905, whose surname supplies the first syllable of the aircraft's name.
Several hundred years earlier, with its construction placed in the early Christian centuries rather than the medieval period.
The house of Hovhannes Tumanyan, kept as a museum in the village where the poet was born.