Ani
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How it came to be
Ani became a capital in 961, when King Ashot III of the Armenian Bagratuni dynasty moved his seat there from Kars. It remained the kingdom's capital until 1045 and grew into a trading centre linked to Byzantium, Persia and the Arabs. It was called the city of 1,001 churches, though the real number was far smaller; archaeologists have so far uncovered 50 churches, 33 cave chapels and 20 chapels.
The cathedral was begun in 989 under King Smbat II and designed by Trdat, the most celebrated architect of medieval Armenia. Its dome collapsed in 1319. In 1064 a Seljuk army under Alp Arslan took the city after a 25-day siege, and Ani then passed to the Kurdish Shaddadids, to Georgia and to the Mongols. It declined after the earthquake of 1319 and the shift of trade routes, and was abandoned by the 17th century.
In 1878 the Kars region, including Ani, became part of the Russian Empire. In 1892 the Georgian orientalist Nicholas Marr carried out the first excavations, sponsored by the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and his work continued every year from 1904 to 1917. Ani was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2016.
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