Noravank monastery with vineyard terraces

Noravank monastery with vineyard terraces

In 1339, an architect named Momik built a narrow external staircase onto the face of a church — no handrail, one person wide, 8 metres off the ground. It was his final work before he died, and it is among the earliest cantilever staircases ever built. From the top step you look out across a gorge of iron-oxide limestone that turns blood-red at sunset, the same gorge where monks tended vineyards for 700 years and blessed harvest grapes before pressing. This monastery was also connected to the famed medieval university at Gladzor — where Armenian scholars copied illuminated manuscripts in the chambers beneath these same cliffs. Noravank was never a footnote. It was the intellectual and spiritual center of the region.