Yereruyk stands by itself on a treeless plateau in Shirak, close to a closed frontier, with nothing around it but grass, stone and wind. The isolation is part of what makes the site so striking: the basilica has lost its roof and much of its structure, and what remains reads almost as a diagram of early Christian architecture. The building rests on a broad stepped platform, an unusual feature that raises it above the plain and separates it from the ground. Its long walls carried external arcades, and the carved surrounds of the doorways, the capitals and the fragments of ornament recovered on the site show a decorative vocabulary drawing on late antique models rather than on the forms of later Armenian churches. Around the ruin lie tombs, cross-stones and the traces of a settlement, a reminder that this was once a populated place rather than an isolated monument. Left largely unrestored, Yereruyk is studied for what it reveals about the beginnings of Christian building in the region. Filmed in 4K, with aerial views that reveal the plan and low light that models the carving, the programme suits strands on sacred sites, archaeology and early Christianity.
