Zvartnots: the round 7th-century cathedral that fell and was drawn again

Leaving Yerevan towards the airport, to the right of the road, there is a circle of columns and broken arches on a stone platform, with Ararat behind on clear days. This is Zvartnots, what remains of a 7th-century cathedral that was, while it stood, the boldest building in medieval Armenia: round, with three stepped tiers and about 45 metres high, when everything else was a cross-plan church. It fell in the 10th century and nobody saw it again until 1900.

Who built it and why it was unusual

It was commissioned by Catholicos Nerses III, known as the Builder, between 643 and 652, on the spot where, according to tradition, King Tiridates met Gregory the Illuminator. Nerses had lived in Constantinople and wanted something unlike anything in Armenia: a circular church with a quatrefoil inside, three levels narrowing as they rose and a dome on top, like the great Byzantine churches, but in tuff stone. The columns carry capitals with eagles, wings spread, and in the spandrels there are reliefs of the donors and the master builders with their tools, something very rare.

How it fell and how it came back

An earthquake around the year 930 brought it down; the blocks were reused and the site was covered with earth. In 1900 a priest, Khachik Dadian, began to dig, and in seven years he uncovered the complete plan, capitals, reliefs and enough fragments for the architect Toros Toramanian to draw what it had looked like. That reconstruction, on paper and in a model, is the one everyone knows and the one argued about ever since: nobody knows for sure whether it had three tiers or whether the third is invention.

What you see today

The stepped platform, the circular base with the columns and arches of the first level set upright again, the altar, remains of the catholicos's palace beside it and, on the ground, capitals and carved blocks. The site museum has original pieces, Toramanian's model and photos of the excavations. Ruins and museum together, an hour. Since 2000 it has been a World Heritage site, on the same listing as Echmiadzin.

How to fit it in

It is 15 km west of Yerevan, on the Echmiadzin road, and the usual thing is to see it on the same day as the cathedral and churches of Echmiadzin, five minutes away. It opens from 10:00 to 18:00 and closes on Mondays; the ticket costs a few drams. If the day allows more, Khor Virap is 40 minutes to the south and rounds off the day with Ararat in front of you.

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