Photos of Charents' Arch
About Charents' Arch
Charents' Arch is an amazing hidden gem standing on a hilltop above the Yerevan to Garni road. It was built specifically built to frame the amazing view of Mount Ararat. The architect Rafayel Israyelian was driving out this way in the fifties, stopped, walked up the hill and decided an arch belonged there. He wanted to call it the Temple of Ararat. It ended up named for Yeghishe Charents, the poet who wrote about that mountain and died in a Soviet prison, with lines from his verse cut into the stone. The arch quite photogenic itself with its dark basalt outside and lined with orange tuff within. Shooting from inside, you get warm stone framing a cold blue and white mountain. Everything else depends on the air being clear. Ararat sits southwest across the plain and spends a lot of the year buried in haze. Spring and autumn give you the best odds, especially in the morning after a rain, and first light is usually clearer than anything later on. Make sure to have a long lens as well as a wide one in your kit. Wide gets you the arch with the mountain inside it. Long, from further back down the hill, stacks Ararat up behind the stone so the peaks fill the opening perfectly. It's open whenever you arrive. Most people stop here on the run out to Garni and Geghard, so it fills up through the middle of the day but is usually quite empty early and late. Ideally aim to go at dawn to pair having a clear sky with have it all to yourself. (Voghjaberd, Kotayk, Armenia)
