“Church fatigue?” my tour guide asked rhetorically, noticing my dragging feet and glazed-over eyes. I'd never heard the term, but after eight hours of monastery-hopping under the Armenian sun, it certainly resonated. It was only 3 o'clock, and we'd already hit St. Echmiadzin, Khor Virap, Geghard and Noravank, four spectacular sites that were starting to blur together in a fever dream of conical roofs, cruciform floor plans and dizzying frescoes. “Final stretch,” he said, patting me on the back, “and don't worry, this place is nothing like the others.”
He was right. Here, 2,500 miles from Rome and 1,500 miles from Athens in a remote corner of the South Caucasus, sits an unmistakably Hellenic temple of colossal proportions—the only remaining standing structure of its kind in the former Soviet Union. I gazed, mouth agape, at its geometrically impeccable colonnade, reminiscent of the Maison Carrée in Nîmes or the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis. Beneath it, double-height stairs wrapped around the entire foundation, and above it, triangular pediments rested on its capitals. Pedestals displaying carvings of Atlas, the Greek sky-bearing Titan, flanked the entrance. My mind was racing: How did a Greco-Roman architectural masterpiece end up in Armenia, and what was its purpose?
