Kecharis Monastery

Kecharis Monastery (Armenian: Կեչառիսի վանքային համալիր), is a medieval Armenian monastic complex dating back to the 11th to 13th centuries, located 60 km from Yerevan, in the ski resort town of Tsaghkadzor in Armenia. Kecharis monastery, formerly called Kecharuk, was built in the Ayrarat region of ancient Armenia, in Varazhnunk, the 18th province, which included much of the present-day Hrazdan, Sevan and Ijevan. In the time of the Arsacid dynasti, this province was a royal hunting preserve. It then became the property of the Varazhnuni family. As far back as the 1st century, the region belonged to the Pahlavuni princes and was called Tzaghkanots. Nestled in the Pambak mountains, Kecharis was founded by a Pahlavuni prince in the 11th century, and construction continued until the middle of the 13th century with its acquisition by the Proshian family. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Kecharis was a major religious center of Armenia and a place of higher education. Today, the monastery has been fully restored and is clearly visible from the ski slopes. The domes of the two main churches were heavily damaged in an earthquake in 1927. The buildings were conserved during the period of the Armenian SSR, and rebuilding work started in the 1980s. A series of nationwide problems led to a halt in the rebuilding for about a decade as the 1988 Armenian earthquake hit, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the First Nagorno-Karabakh War broke out, and Armenia was blockaded by its two allied Turkic neighbors. Rebuilding work resumed at Kecharis in 1998 and finished in 2000. The restarted work was paid for by an Armenian donor from Vienna, Vladimir Harutyunian, in memory of his parents Harutyun and Arsenik.