GARNI TEMPLE

The Temple of Garni is rightly considered a jewel of Hellenistic architecture. King Tiridate I would have undertaken its construction in 77, upon his return from Rome, where the Emperor Nero, his suzerain who had crowned him, had guaranteed his help for this great work. Built on a podium accessed by steps, the Temple of the Sun, facing north, is an elegant rectangular construction of grey basalt surrounded by 24 columns of Roman Ionic order and preceded by a pediment. The sober interior consists of a room with a barrel vault with an opening that must have been linked to the cult of the sun god Mithra, which was very fashionable in the East and in Rome at that time. The cornices and capitals, the coffered ceilings and the architraves are richly decorated, in the imperial Roman style, but with local variations, which can be found in some of the carved motifs, representing lions, for example. A few metres away are the ruins of the palace, of which the baths, which reveal a string of four rooms, are the best preserved element. There is a mosaic floor (3rd century) depicting figures of the ocean and the sea, surrounded by inscriptions in Greek and various mythical beings, such as naiads riding on dolphins, fish and other marine figures that are rather unusual in this mountain world. The colonnade was collapsed by an earthquake and was reassembled with the original stones in Soviet times.