Etchmiadzin Cathedral

Etchmiadzin Cathedral, in the town of Vagharshapat west of Yerevan in Armenia, is the mother church of the Armenian Apostolic Church and the seat of its supreme patriarch, the Catholicos of All Armenians. Armenia is traditionally held to have been the first state to adopt Christianity, when King Tiridates III was converted by Saint Gregory the Illuminator in the early fourth century, and the first cathedral was built here soon afterwards. According to tradition, Gregory saw in a vision Christ descending from heaven to show him where to build, and the name Etchmiadzin means “the descent of the only-begotten”.

Armenia then lay between Rome and Iran, and its history is closely tied to that of its Iranian neighbours; its own Arsacid kings were a branch of the Parthian royal house. In 451 Armenians led by Vardan Mamikonian fought the army of the Sasanian king Yazdegerd II at the battle of Avarayr, resisting his attempt to impose Zoroastrianism, a battle the Armenian Church commemorates as a defence of the faith. In 483–484 Vahan Mamikonian, who governed Armenia under the Sasanians after a later uprising had won religious freedom, rebuilt the cathedral, and much of the present structure dates from this rebuilding.

The cathedral is a cross-shaped building of pale stone with a central dome on four piers. A belfry was added at its western entrance in the seventeenth century, carved with crosses and figures, and the interior is painted with floral patterns and saints, much of it the work of eighteenth-century painters. UNESCO inscribed the cathedral and churches of Etchmiadzin, together with the archaeological site of Zvartnots, in 2000.