Kecharis Monastery, Armenia

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The architectural and artistic complex of Kecharis is situated next to Tsakhkadzor Resort (Gorge of Flowers) eight kilometers northwest of the district center Hrazdan. The monuments stand at the edge of a small site of the eastern slope of the Bambak Ridge. A healthy climate and picturesque scenery — forested mountain slopes and blossoming valleys — provided favorable conditions for building there a settlement in which remnants of ancient structures have survived, including a single-nave basilica of the fifth century. In the 11th century the settlement was a possession of the Princes Pakhlavuni who founded a monastery there, the construction of which continued till the middle of the 13th century. In the 121h—13th centuries Kecharis was a major religious center of Armenia which had a higher school.

The main group of the complex consists of three churches, two chapels and a vestry, to the west of which, quite a distance away, there was another church with its own vestry at the side of a road leading to the forest. There still are many tombstones around these monuments.

The main temple, the church of St. Gregory, is the monasteryÂ’s first structure erected by Grigor Magistros Pakhlavuni in 1003. Being of a domed hall type, it is one of the typical church structures of the period of developed feudalism in Armenia. The composition of the building, known by the monuments in Ptgni (the 6th century) and Harucha (the 680s) acquired individual distinctive features in Kecharis. The interior of the temple is divided by two pairs of wall-attached abutments into three parts of which the central and the biggest part is crowned by a broad cupola resting on spherical pendentives (destroyed by an earthquake in 1927). This imparts to the well-proportioned interior of the building not only integrity, but grandeur as well.

The main group of the complex consists of three churches, two chapels and a vestry, to the west of which, quite a distance away, there was another church with its own vestry at the side of a road leading to the forest. There still are many tombstones around these monuments.

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