Julian Worker – Travel Newsletter 3 – Armenia and Georgia

Welcome to the third newsletter of this blog. My writing this month has been about Armenia and Georgia.

I’m going to publish a book about these two countries in The Caucasus in the Travels through History series (similar to the ones for Northern Spain, The Balkans, Southern France, 9 Greek Islands, North-East England, Poland and The Baltics). These books are travelogues and not travel guides. 

This is part of a chapter from the book relating to Armenia:

Looking like a mini-Parthenon the temple at Garni is the only Graeco-Roman type structure in the whole of Armenia. The temple is situated on a triangle of land thrusting out above the Azat River in a naturally defensible position above a spectacular gorge where basalt columns, similar to the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, can be seen. Indeed, walking along the gorge is a great way to start a visit to the temple, as the spectacular columns are quite a sight as they occupy the entire side of the gorge in some places.  

The oddest thing about the temple is that the precise date of construction is unknown and the subject of debate. The dominant view is that Garni Temple was built in 77 AD, during the reign of king Tiridates I. In 1945, the Armenian painter Martiros Saryan discovered an inscription naming Tiridates I as founder of the temple. The date is primarily linked to the visit of Tiridates I to Rome in 66 AD, where he was crowned by Nero. Nero gave Tiridates I 50 million drachmas and provided him with Roman craftsmen to rebuild the city of Artaxata after it had been destroyed by the Roman general Corbulo. This reconstruction included the rebuilding of the fortified city of Garni and the construction of the temple, which was dedicated to Mihir, the sun god in the Zoroastrian-influenced Armenian myths.

It would make perfect sense to me to have Roman craftsmen build a Roman-style temple. The correct materials would be required, the right proportions would need to be engineered, and the building would have to be planned by a skilled architect, who’d seen an existing structure and would therefore know where all the weight-bearing load would have to be placed. There’s also the little matter of lifting heavy basalt blocks around twenty feet off the ground. 

Different theories suggest the erection of the temple started in 115 AD as Armenia was declared a Roman province at that time and the temple would have housed an imperial effigy of the Emperor Trajan. A newer alternative theory suggests that the building is a tomb, probably constructed circa 175 AD. This theory is based on a comparison to Graeco-Roman buildings of western Asia Minor and the argument that a pagan temple would be unlikely to survive destruction during Armenia’s conversion to Christianity when all other such temples were destroyed. If Garni Temple should be referred to as Garni Tomb, then it is most likely the tomb of an Armeno-Roman ruler such as Sohaemus. 

The structure has nine steep steps at the front and 24 columns supporting the roof with Ionic capitals. Inside is a reconstructed altar and a sacrificial pit. When I was there, a man was playing a duduk, an ancient double-reed woodwind flute made of apricot wood and indigenous to Armenia. The duduk has a haunting quality and many Armenians consider it the instrument that most eloquently expresses warmth, joy, and the history of their country. It was easy to close my eyes and be transported back, by the music, to an earlier time when Garni was newly built and another musician was playing a similar instrument. Sometimes all it takes is a sound to transport me out of my time and I then realised not much has changed here at Garni in the last 1800 years. 

Nearby is a bathhouse with a mosaic floor depicting sea gods, fish, and nereids. An inscription says “We worked, but did not get anything”, believed to be a reference to the slaves who built the bathhouse, but I can’t believe the slave owners would allow such a condemnation of them to be left for posterity to see. I wondered whether in a newly Christian country it might be a reference to the Bible where Simon Peter says to Jesus when they first meet “we worked all night, and we have not caught anything”, referring to fishing. There are fish in the bathhouse mosaic, so perhaps there’s a connection? 

Geghard Monastery is beautifully located in a gorge and is surrounded by high hills on three sides. There are fairy chimneys on one of the cliffs and the walking opportunities appear to be excellent. Legend has it the monastery dates from the 4th Century AD and was burned by Arab armies in 923AD. The main church is called the Holy Mother of God Church and dates from around 1215. The oldest part of the monastery is either in a cave or was hollowed out of the rock depending on whom I talked to. The truth is probably a combination of the two where a cave was made larger to accommodate a congregation. In one corner of this rock church there’s an opening where I could peer down and see people visiting the church below, which was a very odd feeling almost like I was spying on them and intruding in their prayers. In another part of the monastery water was flowing freely from the rock and was being channelled along the floor. Armenian visitors were splashing water over themselves as according to the legend, this water will keep their skin youthful. In many places, the monastery would be bottling this water and selling it in the gift shop, so credit to Geghard for not doing so.

This is a chapter from the book relating to Georgia:  

Batumi is Georgia’s attractive summer capital that sits on the shores of the Black Sea. It attracts visitors from both Turkey and Russia, though the Russians you may meet are probably living there to escape the likelihood of being drafted into Putin’s armed forces. Russians drive the price of almost everything upwards and are resented by the Georgians, although there’s little they can do about it other than write profane graffiti on public walls. 

I began my visit by walking through the Batumi Botanical Gardens along the main path that gradually descends towards the Black Sea with fine views along the coast. These gardens were started by the Russian botanist Andrey Nikolayevich Krasnov (1862-1914) and officially opened on 3rd November, 1912. The garden comprises the following floristic sectors: the Caucasus, East Asia, New Zealand, South America, the Himalayas, Mexico, Australia, and the Mediterranean. Visitors can admire the parkland as well as the succulents, palms, roses, camellias, citrus, bamboos, magnolia, cypress, pine trees, persimmon, and maple tree collections. My understanding is that out of all these plants the gardens are most proud of their camellia and rose collections. I admired the amazing bark of the Maritime Pine trees and the flowers of an unusual plant Rhododendron Ponticum, a species of Rhododendron native to the Iberian Peninsula and to the Caucasus region, at opposite ends of the European continent.

In the city itself, I started my tour by visiting the Orta Jame mosque and then headed to the seafront promenade, walking past the chacha tower, a clocktower in a Moorish style that was originally meant to spout chacha, a strong Georgian brandy made of grape pomace (grape residue left after making wine), every evening for ten minutes. Thankfully this idea never worked, and I can’t imagine what would have happened if it had, other than creating lots of alcoholics. From 2009, the Saakashvili government triggered a building boom in Batumi in an attempt to turn the city into a Black Sea version of Las Vegas. I now saw the results of this idea in front of me. There’s a Ferris wheel of course and also the Ali and Nino statue. The Georgian artist Tamara Kvesitadze created this moving sculpture in 2010. The metal artwork comprises two figures made of stacked segments. The two figures slide towards each other, briefly merging as their segments pass through each other, and come out the other side, never having truly connected.

Next there’s the Alphabetic Tower, a 130-metre high double-helix bearing all 33 letters of the Georgian alphabet. There are many other tall buildings here, including one with a Ferris wheel in its side, originally built to house a technical university but now slated to be another hotel. Straight in front of me were some Soviet-style blocks of flats, which somehow survived the modernisation of this area. Next was the large and clean Neptune Fountain in Theatre Square, a popular place for people to eat their ice creams. Then there’s the Constitutional Court of Georgia on one side of the road and the Government of Adjara building on the other. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, a man called Aslan Abashidze ran the area around Batumi, called Adjara, as a personal Soviet-style republic having as little to do as possible with the rest of Georgia. This situation lasted until the Rose Revolution of May 2004 when Abashidze was persuaded to leave the country. 

Europe Square is dominated by the statue of Medea, a local girl, a Colchian princess no less, with the golden fleece draped over her arm. Medea helped Jason, of Argonauts fame, steal the golden fleece by putting the sleepless dragon to sleep with one of her concoctions of herbs. Jason and Medea escaped and there are many variations of the myth as to what happened next, but eventually they ended up in Corinth where they lived for ten years, before Jason met someone else. Medea didn’t take this well and murdered a number of people (including her own children) before heading to Athens and marrying King Aegeus. She tried to kill Theseus so that her own son could become king, but Aegeus saw through this pretence, so Medea left to return to Colchis and restored her own father to the throne. As for myself, I walked towards the statue of Mehmed Abashidze, an eminent leader of the Muslim Georgian community of Adjarians and one of the architects of the region’s autonomy within Georgia. He became a victim of Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge. Opposite his statue is a beautiful astronomical clock and the ornate Europe Cafe. I then headed along Mehmed Abashidze Avenue past Europe Square towards 6th May Park where I saw the all-white sculpture of Fadiko Gogitidze, the first Georgian female pilot, showing a toy plane to a child.

When the book Travels through History : Armenia and Georgia is published I will let you know.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and all the best for 2025.