ROCKS OF AGES | The Monastery of Haghpat
By DENNIS K. BERMAN
The Armenian man let loose a single musical note. It
ricocheted between the 1,000-year-old stone walls of Haghpat Monastery, echoes
transforming his warm, lonely voice into a full symphony.
If time has a sound, it sounds like Haghpat, one of the
world's greatest religious shrines—and also one of the least explored.
Every year, millions of tourists flock to the predictable
splendors of Rome and Jerusalem, filling the Vatican and the Old City. Armenia,
meanwhile, hosted fewer than 100,000 visitors in 2009. It's understandable: On
first impression, this country of three million on the Caucasus does not feel
like a holy land.
Armenia's cities are filled with grim industrial
buildings. Hundreds of miles of barbed wire separate it from Turkey, from whom
it is still awaiting an apology for a 1915 genocide. Relations with neighboring
Azerbaijan, which claims territory within Armenia, remain fractured. The bulk
of Armenian tourists are, in fact, Armenians, who scattered after World War I
and through later years of economic decay.
Enlarge Image
Getty Images Ancient archways at Haghpat
Yet it is this tangle of histories and enmity that makes
Armenia such a compelling place to visit, as my wife and I learned when we
spent a week there last summer. Men roast giant pots of corn by the roadside;
Armani-clad hustlers share streets with farmers wearing thick, Soviet-era
suits. And magnificent, soot-stained monasteries like Haghpat and Geghard,
which was carved into the side of a mountain, still preside atop green valleys.
Perhaps fittingly, a fine airborne grit—and surprisingly
friendly gun-toting guards—welcomed us to Armenia's northeastern border
crossing with Georgia. We were driven by a 48-year-old former architect who
said he changed careers because there is no work to be had designing new
buildings. Old structures—abandoned Soviet factories—still loom over the
landscape.
But soon enough, crumbling concrete gave way to thick
forest, spread across a series of river valleys. The occasional ox cart
appeared on the uneven roads, slowing our progress. At a roadside restaurant, a
few dollars bought a lunch of fresh lamb, eggplant and hearth-baked bread.
The bucolic, shambolic setting only made the 10th-century
Haghpat, in the northeastern corner of Armenia, feel all the more remarkable.
With its gilded and vaulted spaces, the Vatican implores
its visitors to be inspired. Haghpat doesn't have to try so hard. It and sister
monastery Sanahin, which form a Unesco World Heritage site, are little visited
on Armenia's back roads. At Sanahin, only a wizened female caretaker was on
site. (And down the hill was a memorial to Artem Mikoyan, father of the Soviet
MiG, complete with a fighter jet.)
Enlarge Image
Tim E. White/Alamy
Vendors outside Geghard monastery
From the outside, Haghpat looks like a jumbled castle
whose owners keep randomly adding on wings and storerooms. About 500 years
after King Tiridates III made Christianity his nation's official religion, a
monk named Nishan set upon a hillside near the modern-day town of Alaverdi to
build Haghpat. The main two-story sanctuary was begun in 967 and was finished
24 years later. In the centuries that followed, descendants built scriptoria
and belfries, refectories and mess halls, chiseling many of their walls with
fine crosses.
Haghpat's monks formed a devotional, if paranoid,
communal existence. Their lives were short. Books and manuscripts were fiercely
protected. Invaders were so frequent that the windows were designed as narrow
slits, which today seem to concentrate the power of the sunlight that beams
through them.
Nishan named the place more suitably than he may have
imagined—"Haghpat" means "strong walls" in Armenia's curled
36-letter alphabet. The blackened stone walls have survived earthquakes and
sackings, Muslim invaders and atheist pedants, and convey fortitude where
little has managed to endure. In a country full of monasteries, Haghpat, which
outlasted the Cilicians, Egyptian Mameluks, Kurds, Turks, Mongols, Ottomans,
Persians and Russians, particularly inspires simply because it is still here.
THE LOWDOWN: ARMENIA
Getting There: Russian airline Aeroflot flies to Yerevan,
Armenia's capital, from Moscow, but visa requirements mean it can be easier to
take Lot Polish Airlines from Warsaw.
Where to Stay: Avan Villa Yerevan Hotel, atop a hill just
outside the city center, is a welcome respite from the capital's hot, dusty
streets (from about $96 per night, tufenkianheritage.com). Options diminish
near Haghpat; consider staying in well-groomed Dilijan, about two hours away.
Where to Eat: Mercedes Benzes line up outside Dolmama's,
one of Yerevan's finest restaurants. Try the eggplant rolls with walnut and
cream (dolmama.am).
Inside, towering arches are caked with a patina of soot,
mold and plain old dirt. Birds roam throughout the many rooms, their tweets
echoing among the stones. The sparse walls once held a series of religious
murals and paintings. Most were scrubbed off by the Soviets, though a few
splashes of red and blue peek through the grime.
There are also tracks of soot from a set of flickering
candles. It's as if you can see the centuries of invisible prayer that
accumulated with each lighted wick, making the ethereal into the tangible.
As we explored the complex, we trod on tombs and crypts
laid down century by century. Most feature the ancient Armenian script, surely
describing the pious and glamorous of the day. Some are simpler, depicting only
the most basic outline of an adult's body—or a child's.
To pray at Haghpat is to offer thanks for our short time
here; to know that our tombstones will one day be flooring; and to respect how
a rock arch can plant itself in the ground and not let go of the sky.
Write to Dennis K. Berman at dennis.berman@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
King Tiridates III made Christianity the official
religion of Armenia in 301. An earlier version of this article incorrectly
identified Vartan Mamikonian as having made the change in 451.
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