Armenia

An 8th-century BCE Urartian fortress on a hill in southern Yerevan, founded in 782 BCE by King Argishti I and considered the formal birthplace of Yerevan, with substantial stone walls, a cuneiform inscription by the founder, and a museum housing artifacts from the Urartian settlement.

A 1st-century Greco-Roman temple standing in a volcanic gorge near Yerevan, built for a sun god and the only surviving Hellenistic colonnade building in the territory of the former Soviet Union, largely reconstructed from original fragments after a 1679 earthquake.

An ancient monastery on the Ararat plain at the foot of Mount Ararat, built over a deep pit where, according to Armenian tradition, St. Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned for 13 years before converting King Tiridates III to Christianity in 301 CE — the event that made Armenia the world's first Christian state.

One of the largest freshwater lakes in the world at high altitude, Lake Sevan sits at 1,900 metres above sea level in the Armenian highlands and supports a distinct ecosystem centred on the Sevan trout and a peninsula crowned by the 9th-century Sevanavank monastery.

A 13th-to-14th-century Armenian monastery set against a backdrop of red volcanic cliffs in the Amaghu Valley of Vayots Dzor, southwest Armenia, famous for its two-storey church with an elaborately carved parametric stone portal by the architect-monk Momik.

A 9th-century Armenian monastic complex perched on a basalt plateau in Syunik, south Armenia, accessed by the world's longest reversible aerial tramway and forming one of the most complete medieval ecclesiastical settlements in the South Caucasus.