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Lake Sevan

added29 August 2026

A high-altitude lake that supplies almost all of Armenia's fresh water. In Soviet times its level was deliberately dropped by nearly twenty metres for hydroelectricity, and what lay beneath came out: Bronze Age settlements, fortresses and necropolises. The Sevan peninsula was an island before that draining. The monastery of Sevanavank was founded in 874 by Princess Mariam, and tradition has it built by monks exiled from Echmiadzin for misconduct.

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40.31060, 45.34920

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The Vishap Stones of the Gegham Mountains

On the high pastures of Armenia stand the vishaps — stone stelae up to five metres tall, carved as fish or wrapped in the hide of a bull. They are some four thousand years old and were set at springs and water channels. In Armenian mythology the vishap is a dragon that lives in the mountains and holds back the water, until the hero Vahagn defeats it. The stelae predate the written tradition, so who raised them and why is known only from the stone.

36 km away

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Mount Ararat

A mountain in eastern Turkey that biblical tradition names as the resting place of the ark. Searches have run since the nineteenth century and have not stopped: in 1949 aerial photography recorded a dark structure on the glacier, known as the Ararat Anomaly, whose images were only declassified in 1995. Geologists explain it as an outcrop. The mountain is closed to unrestricted climbing, which has not deterred anyone.

112 km away

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The Durupınar Formation, the Ark

The Durupınar site is a natural geological formation resembling the hull of a massive ship, roughly 160 meters (538 feet) long, situated in the Tendürek Mountains of eastern Turkey. Located 30 kilometers south of Mount Ararat, the outcrop has been promoted for decades by creationists and alternative theorists as the petrified remains of Noah's Ark.

136 km away

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