Tour Guide, Yerevan, Armenia
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People of Goris say that they invented the arch as an architectural form. After wandering around the cave city of Khndzoresk and the no less cave Old Goris, you suddenly realize that you are no longer taking this with humour. Anyway, it’s worth taking a walk through the caves, watching how the rough masonry, which overlaps the entrances, is overgrown with building refinements, and then it separates, starting an independent life. And it becomes so obvious that architecture was born from nature by the method of budding.
The view from the observation deck to Old Khndzoresk causes confusion of feelings. These three kilometres of the gorge are dotted with sharp stone blocks with empty eye sockets of caves. About a thousand years ago, a person settled in them. First of all, he must have appreciated the safety of these dwellings, in which a crazy bird would fly into it rather than a predator or an enemy. To enter their house at an altitude of 20-30 meters, the owners nailed a horizontal wooden beam at the entrance to the cave, onto which a rope with a hook was thrown from the ground and climbed up it. Here is a household mountaineering. By the way, the last resident of these places, which you could meet here a couple of years ago, was well over eighty. But, as it turned out, all ages are submissive to the love of their home. We didn’t find a climber here this time.
Under the canopy of huge trees, we slowly descend into the gorge. In the shadow of the arch is a spring. This vault is man-made. It must have been difficult for the local builders to give up the habit of seeing the sky in the shape of a semicircle.
Catholicos Abraham Kretatsi described Khndzoresk in 1735: the roofs of some houses served as a garden for others. Probably from a distance it looked like a green skyscraper.
By the way, Khndzoresk means "apple" in translation - you can guess what grew here, and now many apple trees are growing. According to another version, this is a variant of the phrase Khor Dzor - "deep gorge" clipped in spoken language. In a word, these places had two reasons to be called that.