Haridjavank

The monastery, adjoining a small village in the Artik region, occupies a broad terrace on the edge of a deeply sunken ravine. It consists of two churches and a gavit. The main church, built by the brothers Ivan and Zakaria in 1201, is a domed hall in which the rooms on the west side have a loggia on the upper floor, reached by cantilevered stairs; the exterior is richly decorated at the base with reliefs that surround the windows, forming large crosses, arches and panels, and on the east wall there is a bas-relief showing the donors offering a model of the church; the surface of the drum is articulated by narrow blind arcading. A second, faithful three-dimensional model of the church, in stone, stands at the top of its west façade. The gavit, of the type with four free-standing columns, was built in the 13th century under Prince Vahram Hetchoup. Near the south-west corner of the gavit stands the church of St. Gregory, of the “tetraconch” type, with apses that are semicircular inside and polygonal outside; its volume, however, cannot be clearly read, since one of the apses is inside the gavit, a second is preceded by the small entrance portico and the others are covered by two small rectangular chapels added later; the shell of the dome is extradosed.