The medieval capital of the short-lived independent kingdom of Armenia, Ani lay in ruins when it was rejoined to Christian Armenia following the Russian defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1878. King Ashot III had relocated his capital from Kars to Ani in 961, but it enjoyed only a brief heyday, as successor King Gagik II succumbed to Byzantine forces in 1045. Sent there first in 1892 because he was one of the few Russian scholars fluent in Armenian, Nikolai Marr made the ruins his centerpiece for creating archeological museums in situ.
Prospect