ARMENIAN CHURCH IN KAYSERI

Armenian Church in Kayseri

One of the places I have to visit when in Kayseri is the Armenian Church. The city of Caeserea, today called Kayseri, has an important place in the history of the Armenian Church. Once the most important city in central Anatolia, with a population said to be 400000 in 250 AD, it was where St. Gregory the Illuminator grew up, was educated, and became a Christian. The church sits within a high walled enclosure that also contains many smaller ancillary buildings, mostly now derelict and roofless. The church is a relatively recent construction, being built in 1856. There are older dates on some of the surrounding buildings, so there was probably an older church on the same site. In the 1990s the interior was renovated, and the altars re-gilded. The church has a main entrance on its west side - a large belltower stands in front of it, forming a porch. There is a secondary entrance at the west end of its south side, plus a third entrance above this secondary entrance that is reached by an external staircase and gives access to a large gallery inside the church, at its western end. This gallery was probably intended for women only. Its wooden floor is divided into rectangles, each with a number, marking the position where the rug of an individual worshiper would have been laid. With the exception of the columns, the interior is entirely covered in plaster decorated with a mixture of motifs - European, Turkish, and Armenian - of little real artistic merit but very much of their time period. On the pendentives of the dome are depicted the four Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, together with their attributes.