Amenaprkich (Holy Redeemer) church
Monastery interior
Entrance to the main church with two Khachkars (cross-stones)
Haghpat and Sanahin Monastery is situated in the Debed canyon close to Alaverdi, the last of major industrial towns with their ruin of enormous soviet industrial complexes, situated on the road along the Debed River from Yerevan to Tbilisi. We decided to visit both monasteries on our way from Yerevan back to Tbilisi.
The exact date of the foundation of Sanahin and Haghpat is unknown, but is estimated to before year 1000.
In the monasteries, humanitarian sciences and medicine were studied, scientific treatises written and paintings, most miniatures, created.
Built in the monasteries over three centuries were more than 20 various churches and chapels, bell-towers, the building of the Academy, book depositories, refectories, galleries, bridges and other monumental structures, to say nothing of numerous dwelling and service premises.
The main monastery buildings are grouped around their chief temples, forming integral architectural organisms.
Sanahin and Haghpat complexes have in common are not only the compositional features of various structures. The architectural details and decoration of the monuments, which belong to the same epoch, have much in common and are even exactly alike in some cases, which give ground to presume that they were created by craftsmen of the same school.
The name Sanahin literally translates from Armenian as "this one is older than that one", presumably representing a claim to having an older monastery than the neighbouring Haghpat Monastery. The two villages and their monasteries are similar in many ways, and lie in plain view of each other on a dissected plateau formation, separated by a deep "crack" formed by a small river tributary to the Debed river.
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