II. Found-but-lost

The Ruins of Ani Inscribing a Second Loss

Ani bridge and Cathedral, 2025, photographed by Konrad Siekierski. — Ani view from the Armenian side – image 2 of 2

After the Armenian genocide of 1915 and with the establishment of the Soviet Union, Armenian collective life split into two. A global diaspora formed largely out of the communities made up of genocide survivors. This diaspora was barred from free interaction with Soviet Armenians and could not return to its ancestral lands in Turkey. The ruins of Ani themselves faced violence as the site and the archeological objects excavated by Nikolai Marr were looted by Turkish and Caucasian Tatar forces. The artifacts rescued by Ashkharbek Kalantar and preserved in Soviet Armenia acquired the symbolic quality of a remnant. For diaspora Armenians from the West, who from the 1960s onwards increasingly started visiting Ani, its ruins were not just standing for past glory, but also symbolized an ongoing experience of loss. As for Armenians living inside Turkey, mainly in Istanbul, their relationship with the ruins of Ani has been marked with profound silences and ambiguities.

Highlights from This Period

Group photograph of the first Armenian Heritage Tour, organized by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), USA, in July, 1967. Manoog Young, the Founding Chairman of NAASR and its long-time chairman, is second from right. J. Michael Hagopian is at the far left. An Armenian-American filmmaker born in Kharpert, Hagopian used footage which he shot during the trip for his documentary <em>Historical Armenia</em> (1969). National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), Boston. — Diasporic Pilgrimages – NAASR

Armen Aroyan was an Egypt-born Armenian-American, an engineer by education and the long-time choirmaster of the Armenian Evangelical Cilicia Church in Pasadena. From 1987 to 2018, Aroyan organized around a hundred group tours for 1480 travelers, largely Armenians, to Anatolia, including to Cilicia and Historic Armenia. In addition to well-known sites, among them the ruins of Ani being very popular, these visits included villages and spots that connected with the family stories of the travelers oftentimes linked with the 1915 genocide against the Armenians. Aroyan fervently documented these trips with his handheld camera. In 2019, he donated the recordings – over 300 videos, some 400 hours of footage – to the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies, University of Southern California. Aroyan also meticulously collected details about the trip participants and their reactions, including photographs, testimonies, and literary works. This rich archive was compiled into four bilingual (English and Armenian) volumes titled <em>The Pilgrim Speaks: An Armenian Discovery of Ancestral Roots</em> and were self-published by Aroyan. — Armen Aroyan

Norair Chahinian is an architect and photographer born in São Paulo, Brazil. His ancestors come from İskenderun, Maraş (Kahramanmaraş) and Urfa (Şanlıurfa). Many of them were murdered during the genocide against the Armenians in 1915. About a century later, Chahinian reconnected with the past and his ancestral lands by visiting his great grandfather's home in Urfa, where he found an inscription left by him. <em>The Power of Emptiness</em> collects Chahinian’s photographs from this journey across Anatolia and Historic Armenia, including the ruins of Ani. They were exhibited in Istanbul (2015) and Yerevan (2016). The catalogue was published in Istanbul by Aras as <em>The Power of Emptiness: Talking with Stones in Historical Armenia</em> (2015) in English, Spanish and Portuguese. — Norair Chahinian

Ani panorama, 2001, Gagik Yeranosyan, 3×6 m, commissioned by Archbishop Mesrob Ashjian, on the occasion of the 1700th anniversary of Armenia’s adoption of Christianity, National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, Yerevan, 2026, photographed by Konrad Siekierski. — Ani Panorama, Gagik Yeranosyan

While left largely unprotected from predictable damage coming from people and the elements, the ruins of Ani and its surroundings continued being studied by scholars during the second half of the 20th century. Noteworthy research was carried out by the Italian architect Paolo Cuneo, in collaboration with diaspora and Soviet Armenian architects and scholars such as Gabriela Uluhogian and Armen Zarian. These activities led to the 1984 book on Ani in the architecture series published by the Center of Study and Documentation of Armenian Culture established in Milan in 1967. Among the contributors to the 1984 volume were Nicole and Jean-Michel Thierry, French physicians and scholars of medieval Armenian, Byzantine and Georgian art, who were frequent visitors of the ruins of Ani. From their first visit in 1959 to 1998, they accumulated vast material about its various structures, which they used to publish scholarly studies. The archive that Nicole and Jean-Michel Thierry amassed across decades, housed in the French National Institute for Art History (INHA) in Paris, is highly significant for providing us with meticulous data on the ruins of Ani and its surroundings. It acquired even more value after a series of damaging 'restoration’ works that were done in Ani in the 1990s. We highlight this by juxtaposing late-19th and early-20th-century photographs of the ruins of Ani and its surroundings with those from the Nicole and Jean-Michel Thierry Collection from the second half of the 20th century and more recent photographs. In doing so, we hope to give voice to the ruins of Ani. — Thierry Collection

Since the late 19th century, Ani has been an important theme in Armenian modern art. Intellectuals – including painters – who were engaged in building the modern Armenian nation at the turn of the century sought, in literature and art, to revive the glory of the Armenian past and make it a pillar of modern Armenian identity. The works displayed here were created in 2011, when the World Union of Armenian Artists marked the 1,050th anniversary of Ani’s founding. In that context, some twenty artists were able to see Ani and depict its charm from the banks of the Akhuryan River at the Armenian-Turkish border. This important subject from the pre-Soviet period of the formation of Armenian modern art came again to the foreground on the canvases of Armenian painters now under conditions of an independent state. It is no accident that the catalog published as a result of the project places works made almost a century apart side by side – emphasizing the connection between pre-Soviet and post-Soviet Armenian art. Thus, in stressing the continuity of Armenian culture from the medieval period to the present, Ani appears as a keystone. Robert Ayvazian’s works reproduce Ani’s church frescoes, translating their compositional and structural aspects into the language of modern art. The same process is visible in Anahit Zardaryan’s works, where the ruined church is outlined with striking modernist brushstrokes, like a trembling apparition. (Nare Sahakyan) — Ani in Contemporary Painting

Graffiti entered Armenian urban space in the early 2000s as a protest art against the country’s oppressive political regime. A decade later, the municipality of Yerevan launched a project to decorate the city with politically more neutral, historically oriented graffiti, featuring, among other themes, famous Armenian figures and landmarks. One such work, located on Tumanyan Street in the city center, shows the Ani Cathedral and other ruined churches alongside a lion – the emblem of the Bagratuni dynasty. — Ruins of Ani Graffiti

The Holy Savior Church, Gyumri, consecrated in 1873, rebuilt after the 1988 earthquake, 2022-2025, photographed by Karen Jallatyan. — The Holy Savior Church, Gyumri

Aghjkaberd Church, located at the southern extremity of Ani, 2024, photographed by Konrad Siekierski. — Aghjkaberd Church

The Convent of the Virgins and the Akhurian River, 2024, photographed by Konrad Siekierski. — The Convent of the Virgins

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Diasporic Pilgrimages to the Ruins of Ani

Established in 1955, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), organized its first “Armenian Heritage Tour” to Anatolia, including Historic Armenia in July 1967. More trips were planned but eventually only one took place in the fall of 1969. They encompassed not only Historic and Soviet Armenia, but also important Armenian cultural centers such as Venice, Jerusalem, and Beirut. The participants in these trips were mostly Armenian Americans. These trips were stopped as they encountered numerous logistical issues and difficulties with locals on the ground. In 1974, a trip was organized to Soviet Armenia, as well as to Tbilisi and Leningrad. The trips to Anatolia resumed in 1978 and 1987 and were taken up again in 2006 and 2025. History Professor Richard Hovannisian and Armen Aroyan led a few NAASR trips between around 2009 and 2013.

Timeline

1800-1850s
Historical descriptions and travelogues mentioning the ruins of Ani were published by Armenian and European authors, such as Mekhitarist Fathers Minas Bzhshkeants and Gevont Alishan, Charles Texier, Peter Ker Robert, Marie-Felicité Brosset and Otto Wilhelm Hermann von Abich. The publications of the last two scholars were made in the Russian Empire.
1858-1873
The Holy Savior Church in Gyumri (Alexandropol/Leninakan), modeled after the Ani Cathedral, was built and consecrated.
1878-1918
The Russian Empire, which had been steadily gaining territory in the South Caucasus, took over the region of Kars, including Ani. The Kars Oblast' became a new Russian Imperial territorial unit.
1881
The photographer Ohannes Kurkdjian published the stereographic album Ruines d'Arménie Ani in Amsterdam, the first of its kind.
1892-1893
Nikolai Marr (1864-1934), the linguist and archaeologist trained in the Department of Oriental Studies at St. Petersburg University, launched the first excavations of Ani under the auspices of the Russian Imperial Academy.
1901
British traveler, businessman and politician H.F.B. Lynch published his two-volume work Armenia, Travels and Studies in London, New York, and Bombay, with descriptions and map of the ruins of Ani.
1904-1917
Nikolai Marr led subsequent excavations in Ani. Sponsored by wealthy Armenians, he was assisted and/or accompanied by architectural historian Toros Toramanian (1864-1934), orientalist Joseph (Hovsep) Orbeli (1884-1961), medievalist Nikoghayos Adontz (1871-1942), archaeologist Ashkharbek Kalantar (1884-1942), photographers Aram and Artashes Vruyr, painters Arshak Fetvadjian and Gevorg Bashinjaghian, and many others.
1911
Giovanni Vitrotti shot a 4:55 minute-long, silent, black-and-white film, the first in the ruined city, titled Ani, La Città dalle Mille Chiese (Ani, The City of 1000 Churches), produced by the Società Anonima Ambrosio in Turin.
1917
Nikolai Marr sent many of the Ani artifacts from St. Petersburg to Tiflis (Tbilisi) to have them archived at an archeological institute. The train carrying the artifacts was attacked and looted by Turkish or Caucasian Tatar forces.
1918
Western Armenia and Kars were left within Turkish control by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Ashkharbek Kalantar, with the help of Toros Toramanian and others, transferred some 6000 archeological artifacts from Ani across the Akhurian river to the History Museum of Armenia in Yerevan.
1918
Josef Strzygowski published in Vienna Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa, partially based on Toros Toramanian's research, arguing (in a now-debunked theory) that Gothic architecture originated from the Armenians.
1919-1920
Being on the losing side in World War I, Turkish armies withdrew, and the region of Kars, Ani included, became part of the First Republic of Armenia.
1921
With the signing of the Treaty of Kars between the Republic of Turkey and the Soviet Union, Kars and Ani became part of Turkey.