Garni and Geghard

About 40 minutes east of Yerevan, Garni Temple stands with its Ionic columns on the edge of the Azat gorge. It is a Greco-Roman temple of the first century AD, the only one of its kind still standing in the region. Below it in the gorge is the Symphony of Stones, a natural wall of regular hexagonal basalt columns.

A quarter of an hour further, Geghard Monastery stands at the end of the valley, its churches partly carved into the mountain, so you enter dark halls cut from the rock where spring water flows. UNESCO listed it with the Upper Azat Valley in 2000.

Garni and Geghard are seen together in half a day from Yerevan, and we add lunch at a village house where lavash is baked in the tonir in front of you.