Cathedral of Ani

About

The Cathedral of Ani (Armenian: Անիի մայր տաճար) is the largest surviving structure of the ruined medieval city of Ani, the capital of Bagratid Armenia, on the present-day Turkish-Armenian border. Begun in 989 and completed in the early eleventh century, it served for almost fifty years as the throne of the Catholicos, supreme primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

It was designed by the great Armenian architect Trdat, who is also remembered as the master called in to rebuild the collapsed dome of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople in the 990s. The cathedral takes the form of a domed basilica laid out on a rectangular plan, although the dome and the greater part of its drum no longer stand.

Its use of pointed arches and clustered piers has long fascinated scholars of architectural history, who often note how strikingly its forms anticipate, and perhaps directly influenced, the Gothic style that would later flower in western Europe.

After the Seljuk conquest of Ani in 1064, the building was turned into a mosque; in later centuries it returned to use as an Armenian church before the city itself was gradually abandoned. The conical dome collapsed in the earthquake of 1319, and the north-western corner suffered further heavy damage in the 1988 earthquake. The whole site of Ani, cathedral, churches, palaces, and city walls, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016.

History

King Smbat II commissioned the architect Trdat to build the cathedral in 989, work that paused at Smbat's death and resumed when Trdat returned from repairing the collapsed dome of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Queen Katranide, wife of King Gagik I, completed the building by 1001, though the inscription on its northern wall has also been read as 1010. For close to half a century the cathedral served as the seat of the Catholicos, supreme primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church, until Ani fell to the Seljuks in 1064 and the building was converted into a mosque known as the Fethiye Camii. It later returned to Christian use; its conical dome collapsed in the earthquake of 1319, and a further earthquake in 1988 badly damaged the north-western corner.

Significance

Scholars have long debated whether the cathedral's pointed arches and clustered piers, raised more than a century before comparable forms appeared in western Europe, influenced the later development of Gothic architecture; the question remains unsettled, but the resemblance has struck observers from the art historian Josef Strzygowski onward. Since 2011 the World Monuments Fund and the Turkish Ministry of Culture have worked to stabilise the cathedral's cracked sandstone walls under a shared conservation project. The whole site of Ani, this cathedral among its churches, palaces, and city walls, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016.

Architecture

Medieval Armenian ecclesiastical architecture; a domed basilica on a rectangular plan with pointed arches and clustered piers, built of yellow, black, and red polished tuff