Khor Virap Monastery
Walled monastery on the Ararat plain above the pit where Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned.
Khor Virap, meaning deep dungeon, stands on a low hill on the Ararat plain within the site of Artashat, the Armenian capital founded in the second century BC. Tradition holds that King Trdat III had Gregory the Illuminator thrown into a pit here for some thirteen years before Gregory cured the king and Armenia adopted Christianity early in the fourth century. Catholicos Nerses the Builder raised a chapel over the pit in 642; the present Saint Gevorg chapel above it dates from 1662.
The larger Church of the Holy Mother of God was built in 1662 as well, and the monastery was enclosed by walls and ancillary buildings in the seventeenth century, with further repairs in the nineteenth and twentieth. Two underground chambers are reached by iron ladders inside the Saint Gevorg chapel, one of them the traditional prison. The hill lies a short distance from the closed border with Turkey and offers the nearest close view of Mount Ararat, which makes it one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the country.
Highlights
- Underground chamber reached by ladder, traditionally Gregory's prison
- Church of the Holy Mother of God and Saint Gevorg chapel of 1662
- Seventeenth-century curtain walls on the mound of ancient Artashat
- Close view of Mount Ararat across the plain
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