Armenia's Crumbling Heritage

Armenian historians accuse their government of letting the country’s rich architectural heritage go to ruin, and warn that thousands of important monuments are on the verge of collapse.

“If we don’t get involved now, as swiftly as possible, it’s going to take a huge amount of money to restore these monuments in future,” Samvel Karapatyan, a historian and heritage campaigner, said.

According to Karapetyan’s Research on Armenian Architecture group, half of the country’s 24,000 registered historical buildings require urgent repair, and most of the rest need work to reinforce them.

Even the Echmiadzin cathedral complex, the spiritual centre of the ancient Armenian Christian church, is in trouble with water seeping into its foundations.

Serzhik Arakelyan, head of the government agency for preserving historical monuments, insists the authorities have been allocating money to restore churches and other important sites for some years now.

The government earmarked 213 million drams, around 590,000 US dollars, to restore 12 buildings last year, but the national auditing agency has since pointed to inefficiencies and other problems with the work.

Karapatyan says official restoration projects have been dogged with problems.

“In the last 15 or 20 years, there has not been a single project completed without defects,” he said.

Several years ago, restoration work at the Gndevank Monastery was halted before completion, so all the frescoes were destroyed by rain, he said.

In another case, the walls of the refectory at the Haghartsin, covered with images the 13th century, were “rubbed down as if they were ordinary walls in a house”, he added.

Apart from underfunding, Karapatyan said vandalism and plain neglect were major problems. Many old buildings are unprotected against opportunists looking for ancient objects to steal.

Asoghik Karapetyan, the priest in charge of the archives at Echmiadzin, said disused churches were particularly vulnerable to treasure hunters, and there was little the authorities could do.

“Sadly this trend exists, although it is not widespread. It isn’t just the church that must combat it – all believers must set themselves the task of changing the way people think,” he said.

“Other people visit monuments and churches and write things on the walls. This needs to end; the reason lies in human ignorance and indifference to cultural treasures.”

Churches face particular problems trying to maintain frescoes, an art which appeared in the 10th century.

The frescoes at Echmiadzin date from the 17th and 18th centuries and have been restored four times.

According to Andranik Antonyan, deputy director of museums at Echmiadzin, the most recent restoration work was done properly using the right kind of traditional paints and varnishes.

Other religious frescoes around the country are not in such sound condition.

Last year, donations helped pay to put a cover over the collapsed dome at the Akhtala church, after water poured through and severely damaged 900 square metres of fresco work. But according to archaeologist Shavarsh Avetyan, it was too late to save much of the art, which was in the Byzantine style with inscriptions in Greek and Georgian as well as Armenian.

Avetyan says the government in Yerevan spends too much time complaining about the lack of conservation of historic Armenian buildings in Turkey and Georgia, and too little money securing treasures that are under its own control.

“The Soviet authorities used to destroy churches,” he said. “Now the churches fall down by themselves because of the failure to protect them,” he said.

Galust Nanyan is a freelance journalist in Armenia.