Part historical study, part travel memoir, The Ruins of Ani takes readers on a thousand-year journey back to the former capital of the Armenian kingdom, once world-renowned for its magnificent buildings. This new translation by the author's great-nephew, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Peter Balakian, eloquently captures the book's vivid descriptions and lyrical prose.
Winner of the 2019 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies (NAASR) From the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, the city of Ani was the jewel of the Armenian kingdom, renowned far and wide for its magnificent buildings. Known as the city of 1001 churches, Ani was a center for artistic innovation, and its architecture is a potential missing link between Byzantine and Gothic styles. By the fifteenth century, Ani was virtually abandoned, its stunning buildings left to crumble. Yet its ruins have remained a symbol of cultural accomplishment that looms large in the Armenian imagination. The Ruins of Ani is a unique combination of history, art criticism, and travel memoir that takes readers on a thousand-year journey in search of past splendors. Today, Ani is a popular tourist site in Turkey, but the city has been falsified in its presentation by the Turkish government in order to erase Armenian history in the wake of the Armenian Genocide. This timely publication also raises questions about the preservation of major historic monuments in the face of post atrocity campaigns of cultural erasure. Originally written by young priest Krikor Balakian in 1910, just a few years before the Armenian genocide, this book offers a powerful and poignant counterpart to Balakian’s acclaimed genocide memoir Armenian Golgotha. This new translation by the author’s great-nephew, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Peter Balakian, eloquently renders the book’s vivid descriptions and lyrical prose into English. Including a new introduction that explores Ani’s continued relevance in the twenty-first century, The Ruins of Ani will give readers a new appreciation for this lost city’s status as a pinnacle of both Armenian civilization and human achievement.
On April 24, 1915, Grigoris Balakian was arrested along with some 250 other leaders of Constantinople’s Armenian community. It was the beginning of the Ottoman Empire’s systematic attempt to eliminate the Armenian people from Turkey—a campaign that continued through World War I and the fall of the empire. Over the next four years, Balakian would bear witness to a seemingly endless caravan of blood, surviving to recount his miraculous escape and expose the atrocities that led to over a million deaths. Armenian Golgotha is Balakian’s devastating eyewitness account—a haunting reminder of the first modern genocide and a controversial historical document that is destined to become a classic of survivor literature.
The DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Turkey is your indispensable guide to this beautiful part of the world. The fully updated guide includes unique cutaways, floorplans and reconstructions of the must-see sites, plus street-by-street maps of all the fascinating cities and towns. The new-look guide is also packed with photographs and illustrations leading you straight to the best attractions on offer. The DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Turkey will help you to discover everything region-by-region; from local festivals and markets to day trips around the countryside. Detailed listings will guide you to the best hotels, restaurants, bars and shops for all budgets, whilst detailed practical information will help you to get around, whether by train, bus or car. Plus, DK's excellent insider tips and essential local information will help you explore every corner of Turkey effortlessly. DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Turkey showing you what others only tell you.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant comes a spellbinding novel of love, despair, and revenge—set in war-ravaged Tuscany. 1943: Tucked away in the idyllic hills of Tuscany, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. But when two soldiers—a German and an Italian—arrive at their doorstep asking to see an ancient Etruscan burial site, the Rosatis’ bucolic tranquility is shattered. 1955: Serafina Bettini, an investigator with the Florence Police Department, has successfully hidden her tragic scars from WWII, at least until she’s assigned to a gruesome new case—a serial killer who is targeting the remaining members of the Rosati family one by one. Soon, she will find herself digging into past secrets that will reveal a breathtaking story of moral paradox, human frailty, and the mysterious ways of the heart.
From early antiquity, the Armenian people developed a rich and distinctive culture on the great highland plateau extending from eastern Asia Minor to the Caucasus. On that crossroad, they interacted on many levels with civilizations of the Orient and Occident. Armenian Kars and Ani represents a departure from the preceding volumes in this series which have focused on the historic Western Armenian provinces, cities, and communities that were encompassed in the Ottoman Empire. In modern history, Kars and Ani were very much a part of Eastern or Russian Armenia, and, even after the Turkish border was pushed eastward again in the aftermath of World War I, the Russian and Caucasian influences in the region remained manifest in its urban planning and architecture and in its music, cuisine, and other forms of popular culture. Historically, Ani, lying along the right bank of the Akhurian (Arpachai) River in the great plain of Shirak, outshone Kars (Vanand) as the medieval Bagratuni/Bagratid kingdom's last illustrious capital city, with its great walls and grand palaces and its fabled thousand and one churches. But Kars preceded Ani as the Bagratuni capital and, what was more, continued to exist as a regional administrative center long after the decline and ultimate abandonment of Ani. Hence, while the histories of the two neighboring Armenian cities are linked, they are also quite distinct. The UCLA conference series, Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces, is organized by the Holder of the Armenian Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Armenian History with the purpose of exploring and illuminating the historical, political, cultural, religious, social, and economic legacies of a people rooted for millennia on the Armenian highland. Armenian Kars and Ani is the tenth of the conference proceedings to be published. Scholars from various disciplines present the history and culture of the region across the centuries until its de-Armenianization between 1918 and 1921. Other volumes in this series include Armenian Van/Vaspurakan; Baghesh/Bitlis and Taron/Mush; Tsopk/Kharpert; Karin/Erzerum; Sebastia/Sivas and Lesser Armenia; Tigranakert/Diarbekir and Edessa/Urfa; Cilicia; Pontus--Trebizond-Black Sea Communities; and Constantinople. Publisher's note.
Illustrated guide to Historic Western Armenia, the ancient homeland of the Armenian nation. Illustrated with more than 125 color photographs and maps, as well as with historic photographs from 100 years ago. This is the first-ever guide to the Western Armenian homeland of the Armenian nation, and is published on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
