The Lost Motherland: Ruins of Ani

[chinchilla]

The lost motherland (Part 2)
by Tatul Hakobyan

The ruins of Ani

Let us move from Kars to another capital of the Kingdom of Bagratunis, the ruins of Ani. Ani was first mentioned in the manuscripts by historiographers Eghishe and Ghazar Parpetsi, as an unassailable fortress. It is assumed that Ani got its name from the fortress city Ani, which was a religious center for pagan Armenians. In foreign lands, even if it is Western Armenia, a good and well-informed taxi driver can turn out to be more useful than an Armenian-Turkish phrasebook, a map of the region, or your knowledge of the architectural monuments. For example in the province of Kars, my best companion is a Turkish citizen by the name Jelal, who not only has a good knowledge of English, but is also versed in history (the Turkish version, of course). On his mother’s side he is Armenian, but what is the most important he is a kind and a trustworthy taxi driver. On March 23, I was the only visitor to the ruins of Ani. The weather was rainy, so after I had visited several churches, Jelal told me that he’ll wait for me in the taxi by the gates, while I once again took pictures of the dilapidated masterpieces of Armenian medieval architecture. During 989–1001, by order of Smbat II of the House of Bagratuni, architect Trdat built the main cathedral of Ani in the territory between the enclosures Ashotashen and Smbatashen. King Smbat was not lucky enough to see the wonder, and only under the patronage of Catranide, the wife of Gagik the First, who inherited the throne from King Smbat, was the construction of the main cathedral of Ani finished. The inscription on the southern front of the cathedral states, “During the reign of Gagik, the King of kings of Armenians and Georgians, I, the daughter of Vasak, the king of Syunik, the queen of Armenians, by inspiration of our gracious Lord and by the order of King Gagik, have built this holy cathedral, founded by Smbat the Great.” Ani, the capital-fortress city of the Bagratunis, which is now introduced to tourists as part of the Turkish heritage, is located at the right bank of river Akhurian, 45 kilometers from Kars, capital of Vanand’s Armenian kingdom, by the village of Ojakhli. In the beginning of the eighth century, the Armenian ruler Ashot Bagratuni the Meateater bought the provinces of Arsharunik and Shirak and joined them together with Ani to his lands. By the great wall of Ani, next to the entrance, there are English and Turkish signs telling about the history of the city. Obviously, these signs, as well as the ones within the walls never mention that Ani was an Armenian capital. You will never find the words “Armenian” or “Armenia” anywhere, except in the thousand-year inscriptions on the Armenian churches. These tell the truth about Ani. Everything else that they’ll tell you in Ani are lies, in the word and spirit of Turkish historiography. Last time I visited the ruins of Ani, which was possibly in the August of 2003, Turkish frontier guards Mammed and Murad were showing tourists a quarry across the border. They were offering binoculars and telling in their poor English, that the digging had been going on for three years.

“What country is on the other side of the river?” I asked.

“Ermanistan, Ermanistan” the Turkish guards agreed. In “Ermenistan” the binoculars were showing trucks by the quarry carrying stones, and 3 people sitting on a hill, possibly artists, who were painting the cathedrals of the Armenian kingdom of Bagratuni. The Turkish frontier guards said that the Armenians were making underground explosions in the quarry, and that was the reason that the ruins of Ani were collapsing. This time there were no frontier guards, and one did not need to get permission to visit Ani from Kars anymore. I’m all alone in the ruins of Ani. From the other side of the river the noise of the tractors working in the quarry on the Armenian side was still disturbing the silence of the ruins. However, that didn’t prevent me from imagining and shouting at the top of my voice that I am the king of the ruins of Ani. In the year 961, Ashot Bagratuni II moved the capital from Kars to Ani. In 992, the catholicosate also moved to Ani. Historians state that at that times Ani had a population of about 100 thousand, 12 bishops, 40 monastery superiors, and 500 priests. With the decline of the Bagratuni kingdom, in 1045, Ani was besieged by the Byzantine army. The last king, Gagik II got the city of Cesaria and a palace in Constantinople as compensation. A few years later, in 1064, the Seljuk Turks captured Ani and sold it to a Kurdish dynasty Shadadan. In 1200, Tamar, the Georgian queen, captured Ani; in 1237, it was passed into the hands of the Mongols. In the middle of the 14th century, the Turkmen tribe Karakoyunlu made Ani their capital. In 1579, Ani became a part of the rising Ottoman Empire. From the beginning of the 19th century until now, Ani has been desolated. In the city, within and outside its walls, the monuments of Armenian medieval architectural are dilapidated. Tigran Honents’ Saint Gregory Church was built in a comparatively late period, in 1215, when Ani was under the control of the Georgian queen Tamar. Maybe this is the reason this church is in reasonably good shape; the inner walls of the church are all in colored miniatures. Saint Amenaprkich church was built during the first half of the 11th century. Today half of it is ruined. The bridge of Ani, which was built in the tenth century and is almost ruined, connects the right and the left banks of Akhuryan and is open for tourists, because it is situated in a neutral zone of the Turkish-Armenian border. You have to look at the Saint Hripsime monastery using binoculars. It is on the bank of the river, almost ruined. In Ani, beside Armenian culture, you can also see architectural monuments from the Seljuk period, such as a bathhouse or the Menuchehr mosque.

Jelal, the taxi driver, was patiently waiting by the gates.

“Jelal, can we say today, that these ruins of Ani are ours?” I asked.

Jelal didn’t answer, but there was kindness on his face. He drove faster and half an hour later, under the downpour turning into snow, we reached Kars, ready to leave for Avetis Aharonyan’s birthplace the next morning.

To be continued.

http://www.reporter.am

[chinchilla]

Drawing Depicting a Reconstruction of Ani in the Architecture Museum of Yerevan
History of Ani
Turkish website on Ani


Three-dimensional model of the ruins of Ani, on display within the State Museum of Armenian History

[Joseph]

Drawing Depicting a Reconstruction of Ani in the Architecture Museum of Yerevan
History of Ani
Turkish website on Ani


Three-dimensional model of the ruins of Ani, on display within the State Museum of Armenian History

Very nice.

[chinchilla]

Coins of the churches of Ani and Akhtamar going on eBay for $290?

Does the seller hope that the bidders won't realize how much 10,000 drams is worth?

[Gavur]

Until recently I didn't realize that the Fortress of Ani was built on an existing city carved out of rocks!

[chinchilla]

Sometimes doing nothing may be the best way to preserve medieval Armenian monuments, an architectural historian says

By Anoush Ter Taulian

Anahit Ter-Stepanian, art historian and an organizer of Harvard’s recent “Armenian Monuments of Nakhichevan” exhibit, introduces Steven Sim to the crowd at Columbia University.

* “Virtual Ani” creator Steven Sim gives two talks in New York

New York – On November 15, Scottish architectural historian Steven Sim presented a slide show and lecture about the remnants of the Armenian cultural heritage in Turkey, at the Diocesan Center in New York. The speech – one of two Sim gave in New York (see the sidebar story) – was an adjunct event of the “Armenian Monuments of the Nakhichevan Region” exhibition, which was concurrently on display at Harvard University. Sim’s presentation showed how one dedicated individual can make an important contribution to preserving that cultural heritage. His search for the monuments of historic Armenia has taken him, alone, into some remote and inhospitable parts of what is now Turkey and Azerbaijan. His study of Armenian monuments had been ongoing for nine years before Sim ever set foot in present-day Armenia. Anahit Ter-Stepanian, an adjunct art professor at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, who organized the November 15 event in conjunction with the Diocese’s Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center, described “Sim's first encounter with Armenian buildings ... when he was traveling around Turkey in 1984. He has visited Turkey every year since 1989, taking over 20,000 photographs, while exploring and documenting the region's surviving Armenian monuments. In 1999 he created a website on Armenian architecture, www.virtualani.org, which receives worldwide inquiries.” Ter-Stepanian continued her introduction by noting that the Yerevan-based organization, Research on Armenian Architecture, sponsored Sim’s 2005 trip to Nakhichevan to document the conditions of the region’s Armenian churches. Sim also supplied testimony in 2006 to Charles Tannock, a member of the European Parliament, that led to the passing of a European Union resolution condemning Azerbaijan's destruction of the khatchkars in Julfa. He was invited by Switzerland’s Armenia Parliamentary Group to be a part of a delegation that met with UNESCO to protest the inactivity regarding the destruction of the Julfa Armenian graveyard. In his presentation, Sim first discussed the Turkish government’s recent restoration of the Church of the Holy Cross at Aghtamar. He questioned the quality of the reconstruction and showed how it did not maintain the integrity of the original church. For instance, instead of using the original type of lime cement, the restorers used ordinary cement, which is not long lasting and must be replaced in three to ten years. The Turkish team also made fundamental changes that are contrary to the ethics of restoration, according to Sim; he gave as an example the stripping away of the original earthen roof and replacing it with a pitched stone roof. Sim’s slides of last spring’s Aghtamar re-opening showed scenes now familiar to many Armenians: the gigantic red Turkish flag draped on the front of the church; the thousands of Turkish-flag balloons that were released at the ribbon-cutting; a large sign reading, "Respect the History, Respect the Culture" -- even though the church was being presented as a museum, and is not allowed to function as an Armenian church. Commenting on what he termed a botched restoration, with a low level of workmanship and lack of understanding of Armenian architecture, Sim said: “If you can't preserve the original aspect of the building after restoration, then it should not be restored.”

He added: “Artifacts [like pottery or carved stone fragments] that were uncovered during the restoration have just been left lying around, to be lost or stolen; they should be preserved in a museum.”

* Painstaking documentation

According to the last official list of Armenian buildings made by the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul in 1911, there were over 1,639 parish churches, 700 monastic churches, and 210 monasteries in the Ottoman Empire. The Patriarchate’s figures did not include the hundreds of other Armenian Protestant and Catholic churches throughout Ottoman Turkey. Sim has painstakingly documented the ongoing destruction of many of these Armenian monuments. On Ktutz Island in Lake Van stands a 14th-century church, St. Hovannes, which has been vandalize by Turks who have scribbled their names on the walls. Near Ani there used to be five churches in the 10th-century Khtzkonk monastery, but in the early 1960s soldiers from the local Turkish army base used dynamite to blow up the churches; only one survives today. Local vandals routinely tear up church floors searching for gold allegedly buried by the former Armenian inhabitants. Ironically, some churches that have been used as barns, mosques, gymnasia, or storage facilities have been better preserved. Sim told how the Church of the Apostles in Kars was used as a warehouse for petrolium in the 1930s (it is now used as a mosque). The 16th-century Phirus Church near Lake Van is now a mosque -- even though Armenian churches typically face east, and mosques in the region face south. Sim has also visited monuments in more remote locations which are better preserved. Near the village of Terjan stand a pair of six-meter-tall, 12th-century khatchkars – remarkably still standing. In Hayots Dzor -- the “Valley of the Armenians,” home to the fortress of the legendary Haik -- there still stands the 17th-century nunnery of St. Marina, once a popular pilgrimage site dedicated to a young woman who lived a clandestine existence as a male monk. Nevertheless, “It is distressing to return each year and see less and less,” Sim lamented. “These monuments have no future without conservation. The 7th-century Church of Mren, the oldest surviving example of an Armenian domed church, is in a border military zone and officially people are not allowed to go there. It has a large crack and is severely damaged, and will collapse completely unless urgent repairs are done,” he said.

* Policies of neglect

“The Turkish government has a policy of neglect,” Sim said, adding surprisingly, “and Armenian organizations have the same policy of neglect.” He said he considered it “unrealistic” to hope that these Armenian monuments might be reclaimed by the Armenian Church, and advised Armenians to give money to the Turks who own these buildings to encourage their ongoing maintenance. Equally surprising, Sim said he thinks the monuments should not be rebuilt, because the monuments themselves are also “Genocide survivors” which should be preserved as they are, so as not to destroy the evidence of the Genocide. (It would also be contrary to current conservation practices to completely rebuild the buildings, he said.) “There are still a lot of Armenian village churches, graveyards, and castles to discover,” Sim said. “It is a race against time. Some Armenian with financial resources should try to preserve a few churches to set an example. For $100,000, five or six ancient churches could be saved. Now there is massive urban development [in Turkey] and there is little of Armenian origin left; most Turkish cities contain few buildings that are older than 50 years of age, regardless of how ancient those cities are. After the founding of the Turkish Republic, Turkey undertook a relentless drive to modernity, and because of this most people in Turkey do not see any value in preserving old things. Armenians must act fast, because within 30 years there will be few monuments left to save.” In a question-and answer-session at the end of the presentation, members of the Armenian community expressed different views on what could be done to preserve the monuments. Rachel Goshgarian, director of the Krikor and Clara Zorab Center, suggested that the Land and Culture Organization, which had established building programs in Armenia and Artsakh, could start a similar project in Turkey. She encouraged every Armenian to contribute to the upkeep of the monuments. Anahit Ter-Stepanian noted that "The Armenian community is in a very difficult psychological and emotional state. Is the need to preserve the Armenian cultural heritage a part of our values? What kind of support do we give Armenian scholars and researchers?” Hrand Markarian, who wrote a book about historical Western Armenia, Liturgy: Sound of Stones, said the monuments were confiscated under a Turkish law that declared them abandoned property, in defiance of the fact that they belonged to the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul; he said they were never abandoned and should therefore be returned. He also questioned the decision of the Turkish government not to allow Armenian architects to work on the restoration of Aghtamar, but added resignedly: “It is not easy to get through the legal quagmire of Turkish laws designed to prevent Armenian ownership of Armenian properties.” Mr. Sim replied to this point that an argument about abandonment versus confiscation has no bearing on how to preserve the monuments; that most of the surviving disused churches are in private ownership; and that it was “a fantasy to ever expect them to be returned to the Armenian Church.” He added that the preservation of churches “would be a threat if the current owners in Turkey believed that there was a possibility their property would be confiscated and given back to Armenians.” The result would be to accelerate the destruction of such monuments. In a brief post-lecture interview, historian Aram Arkun, a specialist in the Genocide period, said, “Saving these Armenian monuments is a complex issue because Armenians don't have free access to their buildings, and Armenians who visit them are treated with suspicion. There are so many of them that the cost of renovation would be very expensive, especially when the border between Turkey and Armenia is closed. Certainly, better Turkish-Armenian relations would help. But UNESCO is not actively helping, and the likelihood is that many of these monuments will disappear.” He added: “Ultimately, one of the potential components of reparations demands for the Armenian Genocide -- if Armenians are ever in a position to make them -- would be the return and restoration of these monuments.”

http://www.armenianreporteronline.com/

[Joseph]

http://www.balkantravellers.com/read/article/331

Ani disappears in the no-man's land between Turkey and Armenia

Text by Albena Shkodrova | Photographs by Anthony Georgieff

We pass by Ocakli, the last Turkish village before the border with Armenia. The mythical Armenian capital Ani, which at the end of the ninth century outshined Constantinople, Cairo, and Baghdad with its splendour, lies somewhere before us. Chronicles called it "City of 1,001 Churches" and a replica of Istanbul’s Saint Sophia used to stand in its centre.

For the time being, however, nothing on the road speaks of grandeur. We are travelling across Turkey's most provincial backwater. Large, desert-like areas and settlements as if from some prehistoric age alternate along the road on which we are alone.

Ocakli seems to be inhabited exclusively by sheep. We see a group of them observing us from behind a low pen wall. Then we notice that they are engaged in wrecking it by pulling out the straw from the bricks. Judging from their matter-of-fact look, they have been working at it for a long time.

The only person around – leaning on a wall, smoking a cigarette, eyes us with surprise. We slow down to make sure we are on the right path and find out that he speaks French almost without any accent. "I live in Paris," he leisurely waves his hand. "I work for Renault, came to see my parents for the holidays."

This time we get over our shock more quickly than the first time, 120 miles to the south, when a woman wearing salwars and a psychedelically bright headscarf astounded us with her Californian drawl.

We may be the only people on the road for the day. The reason is that the tarmac ends where the country ends too. Ani, one of the least known but most intriguing tourist destinations on the globe, is a mile ahead.

We approach it along the Silk Road. If Marco Polo had not been a fraudster, as an increasing number of historians claim, our car tires are treading the ruts of his horse’s hoofs.

Today, it is impossible to retrace his steps across Asia due to political as well as geographical reasons. One of the obstacles is nearby – the same bridge that the Venetian traveller crossed was detroyed. Centuries ago...

Ani has been in ruins for the last seven centuries. After the First World War, the ancient city’s remains fell into a zone of considerable political tension. Three conflicts of Kemal Atatürk's Turkey – with the Soviet Union, Armenia, and the Kurdish separatists, led to severe travel restrictions being imposed in the course of decades. The Soviets enforced a 700-meter "security zone" into Turkish territory, similar to the one still that’s still in place in southern Lebanon. Nobody was allowed here, including journalists.

The Quarrymen

Ani is one of the symbols of the contemporary Armenian nation just like the Ararat Mountain 150 kilometers to the south. To commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of Christianity in Armenia in 2001, the Armenian government funded the construction of a cathedral in Yerevan. The stones for this cathedral, St. Gregory the Illuminator, came, symbolically, from Ani. Well, from as close as possible: the other bank of the river which is Armenian territory. For this purpose, not far uphill from Marco Polo's bridge, a huge quarry, still functioning today, was built. In a way, the quarry adds to the surrealism of the scenery. The Kamaz trucks and numerous cranes there make incredible noise which the wind blows in waves to the old Armenian capital, now in Turkish territory. After the disintegration of the USSR things took a more liberal turn, to an extent. Only a year ago, it was more difficult to penetrate into the ancient Armenian capital than to pass the JFK Airport immigration. Tourists were allowed through the castle walls only after coming to blows with Turkish bureaucracy in the town of Kars, which required three different permits to be issued in three different offices. Then, at the gate, they were forced to either leave their passports and cameras with security or to write explanations on why, while taking pictures of the cathedral, they had "captured" the borderline behind it too.

We are lucky. Pass permits as well as photography bans were repealed in 2004. Tickets are now sold from a caravan at the castle walls.

Apart from the moustached clerk, there isn’t a soul around. We enter a corridor between the two belts of reddish stone which used to guard the city and look for a gate onto the plateau.

We find it after 200 meters – the Lion's Gate, a tall, well-preserved arch, with the wind blowing through it at nearly the speed of a hurricane. It’s as if all the hot air from inside the castle is trying to escape and shave off the flat plateau covered with long-untrimmed grass.

We manage to overcome Ani's untraditional fortification and a surreal view opens out before our eyes: a steppe with halves of monumental buildings scattered all over. On the left we see half a church, behind it we can make out half a turret, and at the end of the plateau there is half a chimney of a severed mosque.

A thousand years ago the capital of the Armenian kingdom, comprising present-day Armenia and parts of Iran and Eastern Turkey, was a mediaeval metropolis. Its 1,001 churches were technologically and architecturally avant-garde at the time. Its wealth and splendour attracted an increasing number of people, and at the end of the tenth century its population reached 100,000 people.

Turned into a capital by Ashot III, Ani reached the height of its glory with the Bagratids, an Armenian dynasty which declared themselves descendants of King Solomon and King David. Its apogee was during the reign of Gagik I (989 – 1020).

In 1045 the city, named Anahid, after the Persian counterpart of Aphrodite, fell under Byzantine rule. Only 20 years later it was taken over by the Seljuk Turks. For almost a century the founders of the Ottoman Empire fought for control over Ani with the Georgians. The beginning of the end came in 1239, when the Mongol tribes attacked. They had little use of city life and made no effort to restore Ani after a big earthquake in 1319 destroyed it almost to the brick.

The final blow was dealt by the last great nomad leader, Tamburlaine, enthusiastically depicted by a number of western writers ranging from Christopher Marlowe to Edgar Allan Poe. With him, Ani disappeared from the face of the earth.

After the fourteenth century the ruins remained lost for mankind. Earthquakes, wars, vandalism, attempts at cultural and ethnic cleansing, amateur excavations and restorations, and simple neglect added to the gradual destruction of the handful remaining ruins.


"What is Ani like?" wrote Konstantin Paustovski in 1923. "There are things beyond description, no matter how hard you try."

Now only a few tumbledown churches, some sections of a castle and Marco Polo's bridge remain from what used to be a magnificent city. In some places the double city wall rises and culminates in turrets of various shapes and heights, in others it goes down, sometimes completely disappearing in the tall grass.

We take a broad dusty road, which meanders between the ruins.

Armenian architecture is one of civilization's greatest enigmas. It has its own unique appearance, but more importantly – it forms the basis of a popular European medieval phenomenon, known as Gothic style. According to Joseph Strzygowski, who wrote in the early twentieth century, Armenian engineers were the first to devise a way to put a round dome over a square space. They did this in two ways: either by transforming the square into a triangle or by building an octagonal structure to hold the dome. Their architectural genius resulted in stunningly beautiful buildings.

We slowly reach the first large building, the Church of the Redeemer, and find out where the Austrian historian carried out his field research.

The inscription on the façade says that the church was commissioned in 1035 by Prince Ablgharib Pahlavid, in order to house a piece of the cross of Christ. Bought in Constantinople, it had to rest here until Christ's second coming. Miraculously, the church managed to survive until the twentieth century: though neglected, it was in one piece until 1957 when its eastern section was destroyed by lightning. The rest was badly shaken by an earthquake in 1989 and according to architects, it is in danger of collapsing. Somebody has apparently come up with the eccentric solution to block up the former church door using some broken stones found in situ.

Now the Church of the Redeemer is reminiscent of a theatre décor: a whole façade on one side and missing walls on the other so that the audience could view the action on the "stage."

Fifty meters further, we come up against the canyon of the Arpaçay River, known on its Armenian bank as the Akhurian, which divides Turkey from Armenia. On the two opposite slopes there are ancient settlements carved into the rocks, their origins still being disputed by historians.

The cathedral looks intact, but there is a surprise lurking behind the gate: we find out that the dome is gone, the open sky above us. Startled by the noise, hundreds of pigeons take off from the column capitals and fly out like smoke through a chimney. Strzygowski must have been a romantic art history scholar, not an engineer.

As a former pontifical church, the cathedral has three entrances: the north one for the patriarch, the south one for the king, and the west one from for commoners. This was Ani's most important building, designed by the famous Armenian architect Trdat Mendet. Its dome fell in the earthquake in 1319, but this was only the beginning of a series of disasters. The western façade is now also in danger of collapse.

On the walls we notice graffiti (Vovochka+Lena=love), left by Turkish and Russian visitors. Some of the inscriptions are by Armenians who must have managed to get here during some of the gaps in Turkey's restrictive policy.

Trdat Mendet obviously had megalomania issues. After building the cathedral, he designed the huge Church of Saint Gregory half a mile north. His ambition was to build it on the model of the Saint Sophia in Istanbul. Its dome, however, collapsed shortly after it was erected and was never restored. Still, the St. Gregory church, named after the Armenians' patron saint, contains the largest number of frescoes dating from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, which made the Turks call it Resimli Kilise, the Church with Pictures.



We go on to the remarkable red Menüçer Mosque, whose arabesques, from a distance, evoke the Alhambra.

Naturally, the Turks and the Armenians argue over it too, as the former claim it was built by the first emir of the Shaddadid dynasty and the latter insist it dates from Bagratid times.



It remains uncertain who is right but the ruins suggest entrancing architecture. The combinations of red and black stone typical of Ani are varied with white, and the six surviving domes have different ornamentation, in a manner characteristic of the Seljuks. Though half-ruined, the mosque was used by local Muslims until 1906.

We are climbing uphill to the remarkable castle when we suddenly notice that the path beneath our feet is not covered with gravel. What we have mistaken for small stones are in fact ceramic chards. I draw my hand across them and find a couple with ornaments and several coated with a colourful glaze. Ten steps further I stop and repeat the experiment: we are literally walking on ceramics broken over the centuries.

The chips may have come from anywhere: from the city sewerage system (a remarkable technological innovation at that time), from pots in rich merchants' homes, from the often gilded church interiors, from the tiles of somebody's elegant bathroom, from a tombstone or a plaque commemorating somebody's triumph.

From this moment on I can't get rid of the feeling that I am treading on the remains of people's souls. I stalk like a stork until I reach the gates, thinking that a handful of Ani's paving material can tell us more than the thickest of history books.

Like the ruins of Troy, this is a place where you have to imagine, not just see. "À la recherche du temps perdu," politely says the Turk leaning on the same wall when he notices us go out of the Lion's Gate. Mehmed speaks an almost unaccented French.

Practicalities

Kars is located some 1,500 km east of Istanbul. Unless you have a car, the best way to go to Ani is by taxi (45 km, $80) Make sure that the taxi driver has understood that he has to wait for you for at least three and a half hours, because otherwise you may end up sleeping under the stars. In the summer, the temperature on the plateau where Ani stands reaches 36°C and in the winter it may fall to -42ºC.