The City of 1001 Churches: The Haunting Beauty of Ani

There are cities whose ruins whisper — and then there is the city of Ani, whose silence thunders across the windswept plains of eastern Anatolia.

Set against the treeless horizon near the modern Turkish-Armenian border, Ani is a ghost city of arches, domes, and collapsed grandeur.

Ani is a ruined and uninhabited medieval Armenian city-site situated in the Turkish province of Kars, near the border with Armenia. Armenian chroniclers such as Yeghishe and Ghazar Parpetsi first mentioned Ani in the 5th century AD. Source: istockphoto.com 

Its medieval churches rise like broken teeth from the ochre dust, and its story is one of splendour and siege, of faith and fracture, and of how a flourishing Armenian metropolis was ultimately abandoned to time and politics.

A City Between Worlds

The history of Ani is not merely the history of a city, but of a civilisation that straddled East and West, empire and ecclesia.

Once the capital of a powerful Armenian kingdom in the 10th and 11th centuries, Ani was known as the “City of 1,001 Churches” — a name that was less poetic exaggeration than architectural ambition.

In its heyday, Ani boasted a population of some 100,000 people, and rivalled Constantinople, Baghdad, and Cairo in scale and sophistication.

Its wealth was built on trade: Ani sat along several Silk Road routes, where caravans from Persia, Byzantium, and the Arab world converged.

Above: Cathedral of Ani. The largest standing structure in Ani, the Cathedral was completed in the early 11th century by architect Trdat. Its design influenced later Gothic architecture. Source: Wikipedia.

But perhaps Ani’s greatest legacy is spiritual and artistic. Under the Bagratid dynasty, particularly during the reign of King Gagik I (r. 989–1020), the city became a canvas for Armenian ecclesiastical architecture.

Here, architects like Trdat the Architect — who would later restore the dome of Hagia Sophia — tested the structural potential of the pointed arch, the ribbed vault, and the octagonal drum dome.

The Cathedral of Ani, completed in 1001, is a masterpiece of stone engineering, its interior a rhythm of tall piers and restrained ornamentation.

Later Western European Gothic would echo forms pioneered here, though without awareness of their Armenian origins.

The Collapse of a Capital

Ani’s decline was neither sudden nor singular. It began, as such declines often do, with politics. In 1045, the Byzantine Empire annexed the Armenian Bagratid Kingdom, bringing Ani under imperial control. It was the beginning of the end.

The Byzantines, less interested in Armenian autonomy than in territorial control, left the city vulnerable. In 1064, Seljuk Turks stormed Ani under Alp Arslan, slaughtering many of its inhabitants.

The Persian poet Asadi Tusi, writing from afar, described it as a city “with its churches razed, its gardens silent.”

Above: Its medieval churches rise like broken teeth from the ochre dust, and its story is one of splendour and siege, of faith and fracture, and of how a flourishing Armenian metropolis was ultimately abandoned to time and politics. Source: Wikipedia.

Yet Ani endured. Over the next two centuries, it changed hands with bewildering frequency: from the Shaddadid emirate to the Georgians, from Kurdish chieftains to the Mongols.

Each left their mark — some benignly, others destructively. Earthquakes in 1319 and again in the 14th century further fractured its infrastructure. Trade routes shifted. The nearby Akhurian River, once a lifeline, became a border and then a boundary — both literal and symbolic.

By the 17th century, Ani was nearly deserted. The once-vibrant streets had turned into goat paths; the churches into windbreaks. Armenians still knew the city through memory and manuscript, but it existed as myth more than metropolis.

Rediscovery and Ruins

Ani’s second life began in the 19th century, when the Russian Empire annexed the region from the Ottomans after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. Russian archaeologists, notably Nikolai Marr, led extensive excavations from 1892 to 1917.

Above:  Interior of the Cathedral of Ani. The cathedral’s interior showcases the grandeur of Armenian ecclesiastical architecture, with towering arches and intricate stonework. Source: Istanbul Clues.

Marr, whose methodology was as eclectic as his theories were controversial, published extensively on Ani’s churches, inscriptions, and stratigraphy.

His work reintroduced Ani to Western consciousness — not as a mythical Armenian Atlantis, but as a real, documentable site with unique architecture and urban planning.

Yet politics once again intervened. After World War I and the subsequent Turkish-Armenian War of 1920, Ani fell under the control of the nascent Republic of Turkey. The border with Soviet Armenia became a hard divide.

The ruins of Ani were militarised, fenced off, and largely forgotten. For much of the 20th century, Ani was in a no-man’s-land, inaccessible even to scholars, let alone tourists.

(c)Iza i Jarek Miszczak

Above: Church of St. Gregory of Tigran Honents. An exterior view highlighting the church’s intricate stone carvings and architectural details. Source: Alamy.

Armenians, meanwhile, mourned its loss with a particular poignancy. For a people who had suffered genocide in 1915, Ani became a symbol of dispossession, a reminder of cultural erasure.

Poets like Hovhannes Shiraz invoked its stones as vessels of memory. Ani was not merely lost; it had been silenced.

Modern Echoes and Contested Memory

It was not until the early 2000s that Ani began to emerge from its enforced obscurity. The Turkish government, under pressure from international organisations such as UNESCO and ICOMOS, initiated partial restorations.

The Turkish Ministry of Culture reopened access, and the site was inscribed on UNESCO’s Tentative List in 2012.

Today, while still remote, Ani receives a modest trickle of tourists — many Armenians, who cross the border at distant checkpoints, gaze upon the city from across the closed Akhurian gorge, unable to visit it directly.

What remains of Ani is deteriorating. The Church of St. Gregory of Tigran Honents, built in 1215, still boasts frescoes of Christ Pantocrator and scenes from the life of Saint George. The citadel, overlooking the plain, crumbles but retains its outline.

The minaret of the mosque — the first built in Ani after the Seljuk conquest — still stands, a rare testament to the city’s Muslim interlude.

But many buildings have not fared as well: the dome of the Cathedral collapsed in 1988; the Church of the Redeemer split in two after a lightning strike in 1957.

Above: Church of St. Gregory of Tigran Honents.  Built in 1215 by the wealthy merchant Tigran Honents, this church is renowned for its well-preserved frescoes depicting scenes from the Bible and Armenian church history. Source: Pexels.

Preservation is complicated. The region remains politically sensitive; the Armenian-Turkish border is closed. Earthquakes remain a constant threat.

Local shepherds graze sheep among the ruins, and restoration work is uneven. Some interventions have been criticised for using modern materials or distorting original features.

Moreover, the question of narrative remains unresolved. Whose Ani is this? Turkish guidebooks tend to describe it as a medieval Turkish site with “Christian heritage,” while Armenian sources assert a direct and exclusive cultural continuity.

Above: The Church of the Holy Apostles, also Arak’elots (Armenian: Սուրբ Առաքելոց եկեղեցի, Surb Arakelots yekeghets’i), is an important ecclesiastical monument of the ruined city of Ani.  Source: Wikipedia.

The truth, of course, is layered. Ani was, and remains Armenian to its bones — its language, liturgy, and limestone. But it was also Persianised, Turkicised, even Mongolised over time. Its ruins are not a frozen moment, but a palimpsest.

The Architecture of Absence

What makes Ani so haunting is its emptiness — not only of people, but of context. Most of its inscriptions have eroded. Its artworks are fragmented. Its city plan, though partially reconstructed, is full of unknowns.

Yet, the city feels intimate. One can stand inside the skeletal Cathedral and hear only the wind and perhaps, imaginatively, the chant of a lost liturgy.

Ani’s fate is not unique. Other cities — Palmyra, Petra, Hatra — have suffered similar trajectories of brilliance and abandonment. But unlike those cities, Ani’s decline is still caught in the fog of modern politics.

Above: Ruins Overlooking the Akhurian River  Ani’s strategic location along the Akhurian River contributed to its historical significance as a trade hub. Source: Alamy.

There are no Armenian flags flying, nor any acknowledgement of the 1915 Armenian genocide or displacement. The stones stand — but their story, like so much of Armenian history, remains marginalised.

Still, Ani persists. It appears in diaspora novels, in photographs, in the margins of history books. Its architecture has inspired churches as far away as Lviv and Marseille.

Its spirit lives on in contemporary Armenian architecture, which often gestures back to medieval forms with an ancient, stubborn pride.

And perhaps that is Ani’s greatest lesson: that even when cities fall, their echoes endure. Even when politics deny a people their monuments, memory — like stone — can outlast empire.

References

1. Thierry, Jean-Michel. Armenian Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989.
2. Marr, Nicholas. Ani: The Capital of the Medieval Armenian Kingdom. (various publications, 1892–1917).
3. Sinclair, Thomas A. Eastern Turkey: An Architectural and Archaeological Survey. The Pindar Press, 1987.
4. Krautheimer, Richard. Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture. Yale University Press, 1986.
5. Kouymjian, Dickran. “Ani: A Forgotten Capital of Armenia.” Armenian Review, Vol. 25, No. 1–101 (1972).
6. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. “Ani Cultural Landscape.” https://whc.unesco.org.
7. Cowe, Peter. “Ani: The Ghost City of the Bagratids.” Revue des Études Arméniennes, Vol. 34 (2012).