Zvartnots: the light

Material

7th-century cathedral, now in ruins. Tufa.

Inside the Zvartnots maquette: a curved gallery of tufa columns crossed by sunbeams.

Samvel Hakobyan, People's Master of Armenia, has spent more than forty years building maquettes of Armenian churches. There are more than thirty: some carved in tufa, the same volcanic stone as the churches; others in silver and gold, with obsidian, agate, onyx and mother of pearl.

Work by Samvel Hakobyan