Geghard Monastery

Geghard Monastery tickets: which one to buy

Entry is free, as at most Armenian monasteries, so the only thing you pay for is getting there. Geghard lies 40 kilometres east of Yerevan at the head of the Azat gorge, with no public bus that serves it usefully; a marshrutka reaches Garni and leaves you six kilometres short. Almost everyone comes on the Garni-Geghard circuit, which pairs the monastery with the Hellenistic temple of Garni down the valley and is sold everywhere in Yerevan as a half-day trip. Shared group tours are cheap and take four to five hours.

Private cars with a driver cost two or three times that and let you stop at the basalt columns known as the Symphony of Stones in the gorge below Garni, which the group buses often skip. Fuller day tours add Lake Sevan or the Khor Virap monastery, which makes a long day but covers three of the country's landmarks. Several operators include a lavash-baking demonstration in a village house, a genuinely good stop if you have not seen bread made in a clay tonir.

Visiting Geghard Monastery: what to see

The monastery began in the fourth century as Ayrivank, the Monastery of the Cave, founded by Gregory the Illuminator at a sacred spring; Arab raiders destroyed it in the ninth century and the buildings you see date from the thirteenth. The name Geghard means spear, after the lance that pierced Christ at the Crucifixion, kept here for centuries and now in the treasury at Echmiadzin.

The main church of 1215 stands free, but the remarkable part is behind it: two chapels and a burial hall carved entirely out of the cliff, hollowed from the top down out of solid rock with no joints anywhere. In one, the spring still runs into a basin in the floor. In the gavit above, four columns support a carved dome open to the sky, and the acoustics are extraordinary, which is why choirs sing here for visitors. Outside, the cliffs are studded with khachkars, Armenian cross-stones, some cut directly into the rock face. Allow an hour, more if a choir is singing.

Geghard Monastery opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily during daylight, roughly nine to six, with no ticket office to close. Tour buses arrive between eleven and two and the rock-cut chambers are small, so the first hour after opening or the last hour of the afternoon gives you the place almost to yourself. The gorge holds the cold, and even in summer the carved chapels are chilly; in winter the road can be icy but the site is open and the setting under snow is remarkable.

Women traditionally cover their heads inside, and scarves are available at the entrance; shoulders and knees covered for everyone. Candles are sold by the door and lighting one is the normal thing to do. Stalls on the approach sell sujukh, walnuts threaded on string and dipped in grape syrup, and dried fruit, both worth stopping for. Photography is allowed but flash is discouraged in the dark chambers, where a steady hand and a high ISO do better work anyway.