アララト周辺のアトラクション＆必見スポット - トップ20

Very fresh and cold.

Beautiful.

Absolutely beautiful, highly recommend. There’s a beautiful stream near the place with breathtaking nature. The church is really lovely as well.

Would recommend, might be a little crowded but overall a beautiful place

The pagan temple is dedicated to the sun god and rises almost unrealistically from the landscape. The temple was built in 66 AD, but was reduced to rubble by an earthquake in 1679 until it was faithfully rebuilt in the mid-1960s.

According to legend, in 288 AD, King Tridat III imprisoned Gregory the Illuminator in a cave on a small hill in the middle of the Arax Valley plain and held him captive there for 13 years in an attempt to dissuade him from the Christian faith. Since torture failed to subdue Gregory, and Gregory cured the king of a disfiguring skin disease that was considered incurable, Tridat III had himself baptized with his family and court in 301 and decreed that the Armenians—the first people in history—adopt Christianity as their state religion.

The founding of the monastery in the 4th century AD on the site of a pagan spring is attributed to Saint Gregory, the patron saint of the Armenian Apostolic Church (Wikipedia).

The structure is a peripteral temple on a leveled base and was probably dedicated to the god Mihr. The entablature is supported by 24 Ionic columns. Unlike other Greco-Roman temples, it is made of basalt (Wikipedia).