Zvartnots Cathedral
Circular seventh-century cathedral ruins tied to Armenia's founding conversion to Christianity.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Zvartnots Cathedral in Yerevan opens on the ground where legend says a pagan king met the missionary who talked him into converting an entire nation, three centuries before anyone built here. It follows Catholicos Nerses the Third, known as Nerses the Builder, who broke ground around 643 despite Arab raids and consecrated a cathedral unlike anything Armenia had built before: a circular, thirty-two-sided structure raised on piers carved with eagles and Greek monograms. For close to three hundred years it stood as the tallest thing on this plain, until it came down sometime in the 900s, possibly in an earthquake, possibly in one final Arab assault. The guide asks how a building that vanished so completely was eventually proven to have existed at all.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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