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Armenian Apostolic cathedral, 1655–1664

Vank Cathedral

کلیسای وانک

The Armenian cathedral of New Julfa, painted from floor to dome

Vank Cathedral, the Holy Saviour Cathedral of the Armenian Apostolic Church, is the heart of New Julfa, the Armenian quarter of Isfahan on the south bank of the Zayandeh. The quarter dates from the early seventeenth century, when Shah Abbas I moved the Armenian population of Julfa on the Aras River into the interior of Iran and settled them beside his new capital. Armenian merchants of New Julfa went on to build trading networks reaching from Venice and Amsterdam to India.

A small church stood on the site from the early years of the settlement. The present cathedral was built between 1655 and 1664 under Archbishop David. From outside it is plain brick, with a dome that could belong to a Persian mosque. Inside, every surface is covered: paintings of the life of Christ and the Last Judgement, with heaven above and the torments of hell below, framed by gilded and blue Persian-style floral work in which Armenian, Iranian and European traditions meet.

The cathedral grounds hold a museum and library. Among their treasures are manuscripts, the 1606 decree of Shah Abbas concerning New Julfa, and an early printing press, a reminder that the Armenians of New Julfa printed books here in the seventeenth century, among the first in Iran. In the courtyard a memorial commemorates the victims of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, and every April the community gathers there to remember them.

Today New Julfa remains a living neighbourhood, with Armenian schools, clubs and a dozen or so churches, alongside cafés popular with young Isfahanis of every background. The cathedral is open to visitors, and on Sundays and feast days it is still a place of worship.

Vank Cathedral through time

Iranian history
  1. Elam and the first cities4000 BCE
  2. The Medes850 BCE
  3. The Achaemenids550 BCE
  4. Seleucids and Parthians330 BCE
  5. The Sasanians224
  6. The Arab conquest and the Persian revival636
  7. Seljuks, Mongols and Ilkhanids1040
  8. The Timurids1370
  9. The Safavids1501
  10. Afsharids, Zands and Qajars1736
  11. The Pahlavi century and after1925

1501–1736

The Safavidsصفویان

The Safavids made Twelver Shia Islam Iran's state religion and rebuilt Isfahan as one of the most admired cities in the world.

  • c. 1606 New Julfa settled by Armenians from Julfa
  • 1655 Building of the present cathedral begins
  • 1664 Cathedral completed

More in Isfahanاصفهان

Isfahan

Stories from the regionداستان‌ها

The columns of Persepolis, some crowned with double-bull capitals and some broken, on a saffron terrace with its stair, against a red sun on paper, between tall turquoise cypresses on the plain of Fars.

A people named after a province, a language that travelled far beyond it

Persians

Persian speakers of Iran call themselves *Fars* or simply *Irani*. They are one people among many in Iran, and their language became a shared tongue for far more than themselves.

A nightingale on a rose stem beside a red rose, singing before a pale moon on deep blue, above a frieze of rippling wedges

Singing the ghazal

Avaz: the classical voice

In Persian classical music the singer is the centre, and the song is a poem: a ghazal of Hafez, Saadi or Rumi, unfolded line by line in free rhythm and ornamented with the breaking voice of the *tahrir*.

A Persian tar with its double-bowled saffron body, two white skin faces and long fretted neck, angled across a red halo on turquoise

The long-necked lute of the radif

Tar

With its double-bowled mulberry body and skin face, the tar was the instrument on which the radif itself was codified. In the Caucasus a related tar has grown into a tradition of its own.