From the Wikipedia: "This church, finished in 1215, is the best-preserved monument at Ani. It was built during the rule of the Zakarids and was commissioned by the wealthy Armenian merchant Tigran Honents.[53] Its plan is of a type called a domed hall. In front of its entrance are the ruins of a narthex and a small chapel that are from a slightly later period. The exterior of the church is spectacularly decorated. Ornate stone carvings of real and imaginary animals fill the spandrels between blind arcade that runs around all four sides of the church. The interior contains an important and unique series of frescoes cycles that depict two main themes. In the eastern third of the church is depicted the Life of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, in the middle third of the church is depicted the Life of Christ. Such extensive fresco cycles are rare features in Armenian architecture – it is believed that these ones were executed by Georgian artists, and the cycle also includes scenes from the life of St. Nino, who converted the Georgians to Christianity. In the narthex and its chapel survive fragmentary frescoes that are more Byzantine in style."


It has a number of frescoes that have suffered a lot from time itself and the pigeons that fly on and off, and of course from the activities of loonies and barbarians who left their name, or that of their favorite football club, or just erased part of the frescoes because ..??? Probably out of boredom and mistaken religious sentiments.

The pictures are from different visits, one where the church was still overgrown with grass on the roof and a poor state of repair, the other after some repairs, roofs had been made or cleared. The season was different too, and the colour of the stone seemed different. In 2020 I re-edited both, trying to get closer to the reddish colour the building stone in the area often has. Pictures are larger too. I grouped many closer together, gps can help locating where some were made (view map).