Ararat is the heart of the Armenian valley, its most bountiful and most recognizable region. To the south, right by the Arax river, on a low hill, stands the monastery of Khor Virap — and it is from here that the view the whole world knows opens up: above the vineyards, the adobe villages, the border strip, rises the twin-peaked snowy mass of Greater Ararat. The mountain has remained on the far side of the border, in Turkey, but it still looks upon Armenia.
Khor Virap has its own heavy memory. In its underground pit Gregory the Illuminator spent thirteen years before he healed King Trdat and baptized Armenia — the first Christian country in history. One can still descend into this stone dungeon today by a narrow iron ladder. And nearby, amid the plain, lies Dvin — the ancient capital of Armenian kings and catholicoi, now an excavation site where archaeologists read a thousand years layer by layer.
But Ararat is not only stone and sanctuaries. It is above all a valley: flat, hot, irrigation-channeled land on which ripen the country's finest grapes, apricots and pomegranates. From here comes the brandy grape, from here that very apricot that Armenians consider their national fruit. To the east the plain gives way to mountains: there, in the gorges of the Khosrov Reserve, bezoar goats and the leopard still roam, and the air smells of juniper.
«The mountain is on the far side of the river — but the sky above it is ours, and its shadow falls on our gardens.»
On this page — the settlements of the province (with weather on click), the main monuments, routes and chronicle. Khor Virap, Dvin, the Khosrov Forest — each with its own time and its own character.
