Ani is an archaeological site southeast of Kars, along the Arpaçay river. An important settlement since the Iron Age, it belonged first to the lands of the Nairi and the Urartians, peoples native to Anatolia, and was later taken by the Armenians. Between 961 and 1045 it served as the capital of Armenian rulers of the Bagratuni dynasty. The site also holds works of Islamic architecture from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Placed on UNESCO's Tentative List in 2012, Ani was inscribed as World Heritage in 2016.
The history of the city reaches back to the Early Iron Age, between 1200 and 1000 BC. In Urartian times the surrounding region was known as Akhuriani. Excavation has brought to light Bronze and Iron Age settlement and structures that may be Urartian. The walls of the inner fortress contain reused classically cut stone, and there is a building that may have been a Zoroastrian fire temple. Chroniclers first mention Ani in the fifth century AD, as a strong castle built on a hill and the property of the Kamsarakan family.
The name appears at the earliest in the sixth century, as a fortified place belonging to Armenian lords of the Kamsarakan line. The long struggle between the Kamsarakan and the Bagratuni ended in victory for the latter, and in 780 the Kamsarakans sold their properties to the Bagratunis and moved into Byzantine territory. In 885 Ashot I of the Bagratunis was recognised by the Abbasid caliph and the Byzantine emperor as king of Armenia. Ashot and his sons ruled first at Bagaran, then at Shirakavan and at Kars, until in 961 Ashot III moved his capital to Ani and began building a great city there.
The city flourished most under Smbat II, who ruled from 977 to 989, and his son Gagik, who ruled until 1020; its population in those years is said to have passed a hundred thousand. When the Byzantines seized Ani in 1045 and ended the Bagratuni state, the region was left undefended and unsettled, and in 1064 it surrendered to the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan. The ruined walls were rebuilt and inscriptions recording the repairs were added, carrying motifs of lions, dragons and double-headed eagles. Shortly after the Seljuk conquest the city and its surroundings became the capital of the Shaddadid emirate, of Kurdish origin. The most important Islamic monument at Ani, the mosque of Abu'l Manuchihr, was built in 1072 by the Shaddadid emir Manuchihr.
Around 1190 the Georgian lord Zakare Mkhargrdzeli made the citadel of Ani his base and established a domain covering the Kars and Ahıska regions. His descendants ruled as atabegs, first under the Georgian kings in Tbilisi and later under the Mongol Ilkhanids. Many of the Christian monuments at Ani were built or repaired in that period. The city afterwards came under the Jalayirids and the Kara Koyunlu, but its population remained largely Armenian. An earthquake in 1319 caused heavy damage, and Timur later took and destroyed the city. Even so it was not completely abandoned until the Ottoman-Persian war of 1535.
The site changed hands three more times in living memory. The region passed to Russia in the war of 1877-78 and was taken back by the Ottomans after the First World War; the Ani plateau then fell to the newly founded Republic of Armenia, and in 1920, during the War of Independence, it changed hands a last time and came inside the borders of the Turkish Republic.
Ani has been called the city of a thousand and one churches and the city of forty gates, and there is an underground city beneath it as well, first found in the 1880s, holding 823 structures and caves. What stands above ground today comes down to the city wall, some eight churches and one mosque. Two sides of the city are held by the canyon of the Arpaçay; the third side, towards the plateau, was defended by strong walls of the tenth century, and the Lion Gate forms the main entrance. The building called the cathedral, the Church of the Mother of God, was put up in 989 by Trdat, the architect who repaired the dome of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople; it presses its vertical lines so hard that the sense of height inside is out of proportion to the actual size. The date of Surp Stephanos is not known, but an inscription on its south front, now lost, was written for the visit of the Georgian patriarch Etipane and was dated 1218. Down in the valley the church of Tigran Honents, repaired in 1215, keeps rich frescoes in the Armenian church tradition. The Abughamrents church, dated 1020, shows features that came out of Islamic architecture and were later used again and again in Seljuk building. The church of St Prkich of 1035 is a domed structure on a circular plan; lightning struck it in 1957 and brought down half of it, leaving the other half standing whole. The Menûçihr mosque is worth a moment for what it is: the oldest mosque built on what is now Turkish soil after the Turkish conquest, probably converted from an older secular building and altered a second time in the fourteenth century. On a fortified hill outside the archaeological area stands Zakare Mkhargrdzeli's monastery, known as the monastery of the maidens and sometimes called a church.
Digging here began under Tsarist Russia, which held Ani from 1878 to 1918: the first excavations were made in 1892 by Nicholas Marr of the Russian Academy of Language Sciences, and a museum was founded. Beyhan Karamağaralı later directed the excavation and restoration, working mostly on the Seljuk buildings. In 2019 the site was granted twelve-month excavation status by presidential decision, with Muhammet Arslan of Kafkas University as head of the dig and Yaşar Çoruhlu as scientific adviser.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kars as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -10.7 °C in January to 17.9 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in July and August; rainfall is heaviest in May (83 mm) and lightest in January (23 mm). Long-term means for 1931-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
Visiting hours
- Hours
- 08:00 - 19:00
Getting there
- Access
- Buses run twice a day from Kars city centre, and the site can also be reached with tour companies or by private vehicle.
