Ani

Ani is a medieval ghost city abandoned for over three centuries, located in present-day northeastern Turkey just across the border from Armenia. At its peak in the 11th century under the Bagratid dynasty, it was one of the world's great cities — home to an estimated 100,000 people and celebrated for the refinement of its Armenian ecclesiastical architecture. A succession of conquests by Seljuk Turks and Mongols, followed by a devastating earthquake in 1319, sent the city into irreversible decline. Today a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its cathedral, churches, palace ruins, and double city walls rise from open steppe, dramatically undercut by the gorge of the Arpa River that now marks the Turkish-Armenian border. Walking the site offers a rare, unmediated encounter with a vanished civilization — all the more affecting for the political silence that surrounded it for much of the 20th century.