Geghard

Though there are inscriptions dating to the 1160s, the main church was built in 1215 under the auspices of the brothers Zakare and Ivane (of the Zakarid-Mkhargrzeli family), the generals of Queen Tamar of Georgia, who took back most of Armenia from the Turks. This is the main church of the complex, and traditional in most respects. This church is built against the mountain, which is not exposed even in the interior. The plan forms an equal-armed cross, inscribed in a square and covered with a dome on a square base. In the corners there are small barrel-vaulted two-storey chapels with steps protruding from the wall. The internal walls have many inscriptions recording donations.

The southern facade of the Katoghike has a portal with fine carvings.[2] The tympanum is decorated with a representation of trees with pomegranates hanging from their branches, and of leaves intertwining with grapes. The pictures of doves are placed between the arch and the outside frame; the doves’ heads are turned to the axis of the portal. Above the portal is carved a lion attacking an ox, symbolizing the prince's power.

The arched top of the arcature of the cupola's drum has detailed reliefs showing birds, human masks, animals heads, various rosettes and jars.

Geghard gavit

Engraved crosses on the cave church wall in the Geghard Monastery.

West of the main temple there is a rock-attached vestry, in Armenian gavit (Latin narthex) built between 1215 and 1225, linked to the main church.

Four massive free-standing columns in the centre support a roof of stone with a hole in the centre to admit light. The peripheral spaces resulting from the location of the columns are variously roofed, whilst the central space is crowned by a dome with stalactites, the best example of this technique anywhere in Armenia. The gavit was used for teaching and meetings, and for receiving pilgrims and visitors.

The western portal differs from other portals of those times by van-shaped door bands, decorated with a fine floral pattern. The ornamentation of the tympanum consists of large flowers with petals of various shapes in the interlaced branches and oblong leaves.

The first cave chamber, Avazan (basin), situated north-west of the vestry, was hewn in the 1240s in an ancient cave with a spring (a place of worship in pagan times).

It is entirely dug out of the rock and has an equal-armed cruciform plan. The interior is lined by two crossed arches with a central stalactite dome. An inscription records that it was the work of the architect Galdzak, who also constructed the other rock-cut church and the jhamatuns within a period of some forty years. His name is inscribed at the base of the tent decorated with reliefs showing pomegranates.

The main rectangular space of the church is crowned with a tent and complicated with an altar apse and two deep niches, which gave the interior an incomplete cross-cupola shape. Two pairs of intersecting pointed arches, forming the base of the tent, rest on the half-columns of the walls. Just as in the vestry, the inner surface of the tent is hewn in the graceful shape of stalactites which also decorate the capitals of the half-columns and the conch of the altar apse. The decoration of the southern wall is most interesting compositionally. Carved on it are small triple arches with conchs of various shapes, connected at the top and at the bottom by a complicated and finely carved floral ornament.

The Proshyans’ sepulchre and the second cave church of Astvatsatsin situated east of Avazan, were hewn in 1283, presumably by the same Galdzak, too. These are also accessed through the gavit. The zhamatun is a roughly square chamber cut into the rock, with deeply cut reliefs in the walls. Of interest is a rather primitive high relief on the northern wall, above the archways. In the center, there is a ram's head with a chain in its jaws; the chain is wound around the necks of two lions with their heads turned to the onlooker. Instead of the tail tufts there are heads of upward looking dragons — symbolic images gong all the way back to heathen times. Between the lions and below the chain there is an eagle with half-spread wings and a lamb in its claws. This is likely the coat-of-arms of the Proshian Princes.

The reliefs of the eastern wall are no less picturesque. The entrances to a small chapel and to Astvatsatsin church have rectangular platbands connected by two relief crosses. Cut on the portals of the chapel are sirens (fantasy harpy-like birds with women's crowned heads) and on the church walls there appear human figures with their elbows bent, wearing long attires and having nimbuses around their heads. These are probably members of the princely family who had these structures built. In its floor there are burial vaults.

The rock-cut tomb gives access to the second rock-cut church. This church is known from an inscription to have been built in 1283, the donation of Prince Prosh. It is cruciform in plan. The corners are curved and the drum is lined with semi-columns alternating with blind windows. The dome is decorated, with a circular opening in the centre. The walls have relief decoration depicting animals, warriors, crosses, and floral motifs.

Apart from stalactites in the shape of trefoils and quatrefoils, the decoration of Astvatsatsin church features ornaments of rosettes and various geometrical figures. The front wall of the altar dais is decorated with a pattern of squares and diamonds. A realistic representation of a goat is found at the butt of the altar stair. Men's figures are found on a khachkar left of the altar apse. The man with a staff in his right hand and in the same attitude as that of the figures on the portal may be Prince Prosh, a founder of the church. Another figure, holding a spear in the left hand, point down, and blowing an uplifted horn, is depicted almost in profile.

The jhamatun of Papak and Ruzukana was hewn in 1288 on a second level, north of the Proshians’ burial-vault, by way of an external staircase (near the door to the gavit). Also carved into the rock, its form reproduces that of a gavit. It contains the tombs of the princes Merik and Grigor, and others are known to have been there but have now disappeared. An inscription shows it to have been completed in 1288.

On the southern side of the corridor leading to this jhamatun, numerous crosses are cut. The columns hewn in solid rock support rather low semicircular arches fitted into trapeziform frames which, forming a square in the plan, serve as a foundation for the spherical cupola above them with a light opening in its zenith. A hole in the back right corner gives a view of the tomb downstairs.

The acoustics in this chamber are extraordinary.

The chapel of S. Gregory the Illuminator (formerly the Chapel of the Mother of God – St Astvatzatzin), built before 1177, stands high above the road, a hundred meters away from the entrance to the monastery. It is partly hewed in massive solid rock; its composition was, in all probability, largely influenced by the shape of the cave which existed there. The chapel, rectangular in plan and having a horseshoe-shaped apse, is adjoined, from the east and from the northeast, by passages and annexes hewed at various levels and even one on top of another.

Traces of plaster with remnants of dark frescoes indicate there were murals inside the chapel. Khachkars with various ornaments are inserted into the exterior walls and hewn on the adjacent rock surfaces.