Tsiranavor Church

Tsiranavor, also known as St. Astvatsatsin, is the oldest church in Ashtarak. It was built in the 5th–6th centuries by Catholicos Nerses II Bagrevandtsi.

It stands in the part of Ashtarak once known as the fortress district, at the edge of the Kasagh River gorge.

Over the centuries its northern and western walls were reinforced with additional layers and arrow slits were added on the southern side. The basilica was also once surrounded by defensive walls and, standing at the edge of the gorge, served a defensive as well as a religious purpose, which is why it was sometimes called Pokaberd.

Legend says three sisters in Ashtarak loved a young man named Sargis. The two older sisters stepped aside for the youngest: they put on apricot-colored and red dresses and threw themselves into the gorge, and the youngest, dressed in white, followed them, while Sargis became a hermit. The three churches built near the gorge, Karmravor, Tsiranavor and Spitakavor, recall the colors of their dresses.

Parts of the walls, the horseshoe-shaped apse with its adjoining rooms and the southern nave still stand. Inside, the pair of windows on the western side is still noticeable, and remnants of a toothed cornice can be seen on the eastern façade.