page_title: Cathedral of Ani
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Cathedral of Ani / Politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Stamp of Armenia
context_page_description: Cathedral of Ani is the largest standing building in Ani, capital of medieval Bagratid Armenia, located in present-day eastern Turkey, on the border with modern Armenia. It was completed in the early 11th century by the architect Trdat and was the seat of the Catholicos, the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, for nearly half a century.
  In 1064, following the Seljuk conquest of Ani, the cathedral was converted into a mosque. It later returned to being used as an Armenian church. It eventually suffered damage in a 1319 earthquake when its conical dome collapsed. Subsequently, Ani was gradually abandoned and the church fell into disuse. The north-western corner of the church was heavily damaged by a 1988 earthquake.
  The cathedral is considered the largest and most impressive structure of Ani. It is a domed basilica with a rectangular plan, though the dome and most of its supporting drum are now missing. Its use of pointed arches and cluster piers has been widely cited by scholars to have possibly influenced, or at least preceded, Gothic architecture. The cathedral, along with the entire site of Ani, was declared a World Heritage site by the UNESCO in 2016.
context_section_description: In 1989 a series of events under the title "The Glory of Ani" commemorating the millennium of the Cathedral of Ani took place in the United States, sponsored by the Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America. A symposium took place at the New-York Historical Society on October 21, 1989.
  On July 23, 2008 Turkish President Abdullah Gül visited Ani and the cathedral.
  In June 2011 the graduation ceremony of undergraduate and graduate students of the History Department of the Yerevan State University (YSU) was held at the cathedral. Since then graduation ceremonies of some departments of the YSU have taken place at the cathedral. Folk dance director Gagik Ginosyan and his wife, along with their friends, staged a wedding ceremony at the cathedral. On September 10–12, 2011 researchers of the Shirak Armenology Research Center of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia made a pilgrimage to the cathedral, where they performed scientific readings on history of Ani.
  In February 2020 a video appeared online in which a woman sang meyhane music on the bema of the cathedral while Pervin Ersoy, the wife of Mehmet Ersoy, Turkey's Minister of Culture and Tourism, was shown standing in the crowd and clapping.
caption: The cathedral on a 2002 Armenian stamp
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