© Arthur Guevorkian
The two churches of Saint Thaddeus monastery.

The northwest provinces in Iran have sheltered a number of Armenian churches for several centuries. As time went by, cultural interpenetration left there an astonishing mixture of symbols within the typically Armenian architecture. Three monastic ensembles in this region were inscribed this year on the World Heritage List.

Saint Thaddeus
First mentioned in records in the 12th century, the Saint Thaddeus monastery was destroyed in 1319 by an earthquake. The present condition of the monuments is the result of two restoration and construction campaigns in the 17th and 19 th centuries. more

The place, according to legend, of the apostle Thaddeus’s martyrdom in the first century A.D., the monastery of Saint Thaddeus of Artaz (Artazi Sourb T’adei vank’) every summer brings together thousands of pilgrims. It is enthroned, majestic and solitary, in the lunar landscape of the Maku valley, on a promontory at an altitude of 2,200 metres, where Saint Gregory, father of the Armenian church, founded a place of worship in the 4th century. So much for legend.

As for history, it tells us that Saint Thaddeus was the seat of the Armenian diocese in the 10th century; it endured the Mongol invasions in the 13th century; in the following century, it was held by the Unitors, who wanted to unite the Armenian and Roman churches; it was pillaged by the Persian Qadjar dynasty at the end of the 1700s and became a centre of resistance against the Ottomans at the dawn of the 20th century.

This major site of the Armenian church has just been inscribed, along with Saint Stepanos and Dzordzor, on the World Heritage List. It constitutes a remarkable artefact of Armenian culture in the region, which was one of the most prosperous and coveted in this part of the world, as well as one of the most fertile in cultural exchange.

That explains the astonishing mixture of styles in the two churches of Saint Thaddeus monastery: the medieval “Black Church”, from which the little neighbouring village got its name, Quara-Kelisa (“black church” in Turkish), and the “White Church”, built in the 19th century on the model of Echmiatsin (a World Heritage site since 2000), close to Armenia’s capital Yerevan.

The main church of the Monastery of St Stepanos is one of the most eloquent illustrations of the 17th century Armenian architectural renaissance. more

With their pyramidal domes on polygonal drums, arches, niches and sculpted decorations in horizontal bands, these two central-domed cross-hall churches are emblematic of Armenian architecture, of which
St Stepanos of Darresham (Dara chambi Sourb Stepannos Nakhavka), main church of the second monastic ensemble to be inscribed as world heritage, provides another eloquent illustration.

An impressive building in a spectacular landscape – the description briefly sums up this site, located east of Saint Thaddeus, in the gorges of the river Araxe. Reaching its apogee in the 14th century, the monastery today shares the vestiges of its former glory with Yerevan and Venice, where a portion of the iconography and literature produced behind its walls is now housed.

Its hardest times came in the 11th and 12th centuries, during the wars between Byzantium and the Seldjukids, and in the 13th and 14th centuries under Mongol domination, and 300 years later, when Shah Abbas decided to “clear” the border area, causing the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Armenians towards central Iran.

The monastery suffered by human hand but also because of nature. It had to be rebuilt several times. It was destroyed, as was Saint Thaddeus, by the 1319 earthquake, and, along with all buildings from ancient Armenia with its extremely harsh weather, it is very vulnerable to climate variations. The alluvial ground represents another constant threat to the St Stepanos (Stephen) Monastery. But constant conservation work prolongs its existence.

Built out of carefully carved limestone blocks, with a dome above a cross that is slightly elongated from west to east, typical of Armenian architecture, the Dzordzor chapel’s lively silhouette is striking. In danger of vanishing underwater, it was moved a distance of 600 metres upstream.
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A management plan for the three monastic ensembles was established in 2001, following up the conservation that began in the 1970s.

Twenty years ago, the little Holy-Mother-of-God chapel (Sourb Astvatzatzin), the only remnant of the famous Dzordzor monastery, demolished at the time of Shah Abbas in the early 17th century, was saved from certain death. Left alone for 300 years in the valley of the Makuchay river, it was fated to disappear too when the Iranian government decided to build a dam. But it was dismantled and rebuilt 600 metres away, with the support of the Armenian church. All the chapel’s stones were numbered and those scattered on the ground reassembled, so that out of the 1548 stones, only 250 (lighter in colour) do not come from the original construction.

With its umbrella-shaped dome, it stands like an elegant and solitary princess in the semi-desert landscape. This picturesque cupola remains a key element of Armenian architecture from the 10th century until now. Set on a drum, which allows the inside of the church to be lit almost entirely from above, it surmounts the vaulted ceiling, symbol of the heavens and the aspiration for salvation. Placed in the centre of the church, the cupola crowns the juncture of the four arms of the cross, representing the assembly of believers, the church of humanity on earth.

Patrick Donabedian, researcher at the Laboratoire d’archéologie médiévale méditerranéenne (CNRS, France) et Jasmina Šopova, UNESCO Courier.


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Photo 2: © UNESCO/Armenia/A. Prepis
In the gorges of the Araks River, St Stepanos monastery has resisted history’s vicissitudes for centuries.

Photo 3: © UNESCO/Armenia/A. Prepis
The chapel of Dzordzor has a strikingly vivid outline.