The Noravank monastery

We reached Noravank in the afternoon with beautiful weather (that in general often changed quickly in the mountains). This monastery is really worth a visit. It was rebuilt in the 1990s with the help of a patron, an Armenian living abroad. The nice thing is that it contains a good museum that even has English information plates and where one can ask people to learn about the interesting culture and history.

While admiring the landscape and architecture you might listen to Get Well Soon - When you're near to me.

The Surb Astvatsatsin church was designed by a monk who dies before it could be finished. His ideas were nevertheless used. The most famous one is the stair forming the elevated entrance of the church.

The Surb Astvatsatsin church. The main entrance is the upper door.

The stairs don't have a railing but that's not the problem.

I just stood on the first step of the stair so that my shoulder touched the wall.

The other side frightened me even more.

 

Some tourists in a hurry - they came, took a photo of the church, went up,
took a photo inside, went down and walked away. As this is a standard stairs.

I was embarrassed by the others who could use the stairs while I couldn't. In the museum they said that the reason for the stairs are that people often brought animals to the church service and that should be avoided. Also the person going to the church service should trust in god. "If one trusts god one is safe on all his ways."
If there is a god he made me, right? He made me with fear of heights an prevented to enter his church. So either he made me wrong but a god doesn't make mistakes or the monk misunderstood god's will despite he was praying several times a day. OK, I stop questioning. I cannot trust in a god because all religions tell that their god(s) is(are) the only one(s) and their way of praising him(them) is the correct one. That simply doesn't make sense.

View from the monastery complex down to the valley.

The Surb Astvatsatsin in front and the Surb Karapet
church in the background.

The lower level of the Surb Astvatsatsin church
has less ornaments and only small windows without glass.

The inside is quite "naked" as most of the Armenian
churches. Here I wondered why there is no even floor.

The Surb Karapet church.

The side door of the Surb Karapet is a khachkar.

The Surb Karapet church is more interesting because of its interior. It contains in a side building also a mausoleum of a prince.

The main entrance.

The left door is the entrance of the mausoleum.

The church has a stone floor in which there are tombstones.

Interesting ceiling.

The interior is a bit unusual because the altar is upstairs in a small room.


 

The architecture of the window is strange. As if something went wrong during the building. The decided not to use a bow for the window ceiling and that made obviously problems.

The mountains are impressive.

They rebuilt also some of the small houses where the monks lived.

As I wrote the museum is great. I learned for example about the Holy Chrism and how it is made. The many different ingredients are put together using a recipe that is only known by the Catholicos. He cooks the Chrism together with some bishops. The whole creation process takes several days.

The (known) ingredients of the Holy Chrism.

Such cups in form of a bird are used to serve the chrism
during church service.

An original bible written and pained by
the monk who planned the Surb Astvatsatsin church.

A lamp.
 

The ingredients used for the colors of the
paintings in the bible and on ceramics.

The Armenian alphabet painted with these colors.

The museum also presents some khachkars  and some images about the history of the complex, the archeologic excavations and the rebuilding.

The khachkar exhibition and the museum building.
 

The left image shows the Surb Astvatsatsin church before 1940, the right one the result of the preservation in the 1980s

The gentle driver and his daughter could not understand that I wanted to stay longer than 15 minutes in Noravank. She said it was her first time in Noravank nevertheless they went straight to both churches, lighted candles and drove away.
Everywhere where I have been most people don't care about architecture and history. Also many religious people just go to curch because for church service but don't know much about the church building etc.. And as I mentioned in an older post Armenia is not a very religious country.

In fact is was a good decision to stay there longer. As consequence I had to walk down because there are no public buses to/from Noravank. The tourist buses don't transport other persons than the ones who booked e.g. a touristic day trip. I cannot recommend such a trip because the tourists only had half an hour for the whole complex. This is much too short. If you go there you will need 1 to 2 hours.

The weather can change quickly in the high mountains. And within 5 minutes the sun was gone and it rained.