Ani

Trdat built this and, in the same years, rebuilt Hagia Sophia's dome for Constantinople. Only one of the two still stands with its dome on.

Begun 989 under King Smbat II, completed by about 1001, designed by Trdat — the architect Byzantine officials summoned to Constantinople after 989's earthquake to rebuild Hagia Sophia's dome. Its pointed arches and clustered piers predate Western Gothic architecture by two centuries. Became a mosque (Fethiye Camii) after the 1064 Seljuk conquest; reconsecrated in 1124. The dome collapsed in the 1319 earthquake.

The best-preserved building at Ani, and the only one where the paint survived, not just the stone.

Completed in 1215, per an inscription on the south façade, funded by Tigran Honents, a wealthy Armenian merchant who had already paid for restoration work at the cathedral. The best-preserved structure at Ani, notable for an extensive interior fresco cycle — believed painted by Georgian artists working for an Armenian patron — depicting Christ's life, the conversion of Armenia, and saints.

The only side of Ani a medieval army could attack from — which is why it got the thickest, most heavily towered walls in the city.

Built by King Smbat II between 977 and 989, doubling the fortifications specifically on the plateau's north side, the one flank not already protected by a river gorge or valley. Later rulers raised the height and packed in semicircular towers. Damaged by the earthquake of 1319; the standing fabric was consolidated and partly rebuilt by the Ministry of Culture in 1996–97.

The southern tip of the plateau, where two gorges meet — and where Armenia becomes visible across a border that has been closed since 1993.

Fortified from before Ani was a capital, probably under the earlier Kamsarakan lords; the Bagratid kings later built their palace on its highest point. Three churches stood within its walls, including one thought to be the oldest surviving structure at Ani. Much of what remained collapsed further in a 1966 earthquake, on top of centuries of earlier damage.

Half a dome, sliced clean through, still standing since a storm brought the other half down.

Consecrated in 1036, funded by the governor Ablgharib, said to have installed a fragment of the True Cross inside; restored again in 1193 and 1342. Built on an unusual plan — nineteen sides externally, eight apses internally, a tall drum under a dome. Its eastern half collapsed in a storm most accounts date to 1955; one source instead attributes the damage to an earlier, 1930s earthquake.