The combination of her deep religiosity and keen eye to the aesthetics of ruins account for Praskovia Uvarova’s utter fascination with the Caucasus. She traveled there regularly, worked with the curator of the Caucasus Museum Gustav Radde, and edited multiple volumes dedicated to Christian archeological finds.
Philosophical Context: Byzantium in Caucasus
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.
A fortress built by Urartan King Rusa I, 735-713 BCE, although it did not prove stout enough to protect Urartu from Assyria.