A Greco-Roman temple and a monastery cut into rock
An easy day trip from Yerevan pairs two remarkable sites. The Temple of Garni, a colonnaded Greco-Roman building of the first century, is the only standing pagan temple in the former Soviet Union, and below it the Garni Gorge is lined with basalt columns known as the Symphony of Stones. A few kilometres up the valley, Geghard Monastery is partly hewn from the mountainside, its dark chambers carved directly into the rock and famed for their acoustics. Geghard is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.