Ani, the Abandoned City of a Thousand Churches

A medieval city of perhaps a hundred thousand people stands empty on a plateau on the Turkish-Armenian border, its cathedral roofless, its walls running along a gorge that is now a closed international frontier. Ani was once compared to Constantinople and called the city of a thousand and one churches. Almost nobody goes.

What Ani Was

Ani became the capital of the Bagratid Armenian kingdom in 961 and grew rapidly on the back of the Silk Road trade passing through it. At its height around the eleventh century it rivalled Constantinople, Cairo and Baghdad in size and wealth, with a population that may have reached a hundred thousand.

Its decline was not a single event. The Byzantines annexed it in 1045, the Seljuks took it in 1064, the Mongols sacked it in 1236, and a severe earthquake in 1319 did structural damage it never recovered from. Trade routes shifted. By the seventeenth century it was effectively deserted, and it has stayed that way, which is why the ruins stand in open grassland with no modern town crowding them.

What Survives

• The Cathedral (Surp Asdvadzadzin), completed in 1001 by the architect Trdat, who was also called in to repair the dome of Hagia Sophia after an earthquake. Its pointed arches and clustered piers are frequently cited in discussions of how Gothic architecture developed. Its own dome fell in the 1319 earthquake.
• The Church of St Gregory (Tigran Honents), 1215, which retains the finest surviving fresco cycle at the site.
• The Church of the Redeemer, sheared vertically in half by lightning in 1955 and standing as a cross-section of itself.
• The Menuçehr Mosque, generally described as the oldest Seljuk mosque in Anatolia, on the cliff edge above the Akhurian river.
• The city walls with the Lion Gate, and a landscape of cave dwellings cut into the gorge.

Ani was inscribed by UNESCO in 2016. Restoration has been ongoing but the site remains, by the standards of Turkey’s major monuments, raw.

The Border

The Akhurian river gorge below the city is the closed frontier with Armenia. You can see Armenian territory, and a watchtower, from the walls. The border has been shut since 1993. Photography restrictions that once applied here have been relaxed, but this is still a sensitive military zone and it is worth being unobtrusive and following posted signage. The political weight of the place is part of visiting it: Ani is Armenian heritage on Turkish soil, and that fact is unavoidable.

Practical

• Base in Kars, about 45 km west, roughly a 45-minute drive. Kars has flights from Istanbul and Ankara and is the terminus of the scenic Eastern Express sleeper train from Ankara.
• You need a car or a taxi. Public transport to the site is minimal; most visitors arrange a driver in Kars for a half day.
• Allow two to three hours. The site is large, open and exposed, with a walking circuit across grassland.
• Weather is the real constraint. This is high, treeless plateau at around 1,400 m. Winters are severe, with heavy snow and temperatures well below freezing; summers are hot and there is no shade. Late spring and early autumn are the sensible windows.
• Kars itself is worth a night for the Russian-era architecture and the local gravyer cheese.

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Where to Stay

Kars is the only practical base, and the Eastern Express arrives there if you want the journey to be part of the trip.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources & Further Reading

• UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Archaeological Site of Ani
• Britannica — Ani