Horomos Monastery: Art And History, Edited by Edda Vardanyan (hardcover)

The monastery of Horomos is situated on the right bank of the Akhurian River, about 5 km as the crow flies to the northeast of Ani. When the monastery was founded around 930, Ani was still little more than a fortress. Soon, however, Ani grew into a royal city and the see of the Catholicos, while the humble monastic congregation became the resting place of the kings, the chaplaincy of the capital, an important cultural landmark, and a showcase of Bagratuni architecture. It continued to develop and prosper up to the end of the thirteenth century.

After the exploration of Horomos started, in 1920, Turkey annexed the province of Kars and Horomos was included in a military zone, inaccessible to archaeological research. Only in 2013 and 2014 were Armenian visitors able to enter the site and take new photographs of monuments and inscriptions.

The present volume, with contributions by six authors, takes a fresh look at the site, providing exhaustive updated information. A comprehensive study of the history of the monastic congregation is followed by a general survey of the architecture, a detailed examination of monastic structures, a decipherment of the crosses and khachkars, a review of the manuscript output, and an epigraphic corpus.