This site is locat­ed on a seclud­ed plateau of north­east Turkey over­look­ing a ravine that forms a nat­ur­al bor­der with Arme­nia. This medieval city com­bines res­i­den­tial, reli­gious and mil­i­tary struc­tures, char­ac­ter­is­tic of a medieval urban­ism built up over the cen­turies by Chris­t­ian and then Mus­lim dynas­ties. The city flour­ished in the 10th and 11th cen­turies CE when it became the cap­i­tal of the medieval Armen­ian king­dom of the Bagratides and prof­it­ed from con­trol of one branch of the Silk Road. Lat­er, under Byzan­tine, Seljuk and Geor­gian sov­er­eign­ty, it main­tained its sta­tus as an impor­tant cross­roads for mer­chant car­a­vans. The Mon­gol inva­sion and a dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake in 1319 marked the begin­ning of the city‘s decline. The site presents a com­pre­hen­sive overview of the evo­lu­tion of medieval archi­tec­ture through exam­ples of almost all the dif­fer­ent archi­tec­tur­al inno­va­tions of the region between the 7th and 13th cen­turies CE.