The Capital in the Ararat Plain

Dvin was founded in the fourth century by the Arsacid king Khosrov, who moved the royal seat there from Artashat, and it remained the political centre of Armenia for some six hundred years under a succession of overlords. After the partition of the country the Persian governor sat there, and so, from the fifth century, did the catholicos, so that the secular and the ecclesiastical heads of Armenia occupied one town. Under Arab rule it was the seat of the emirate and a manufacturing and trading centre known for textiles and for carpets that reached Baghdad. Earthquake and repeated sacking ended it: the shock of 893 is recorded as killing a large part of the population, and the Mongol capture of 1236 finished what was left.

The site lies in Ararat province beside the villages of Hnaberd and Verin Artashat, and excavation has traced the citadel, the cathedral rebuilt several times on one footprint, and the palace of the catholicos. Nothing stands above ground to tell a visitor what the place was, which is part of why its councils are far better remembered than its buildings, and why it appears in this atlas as a city that has to be reconstructed from documents rather than seen. The cathedral at the centre of the mound is the reason the excavation matters to this atlas rather than only to Armenian archaeology: it was rebuilt at least three times on one footprint, and the changes in plan track the councils, since a church that has just rejected an imperial definition builds differently from one that has not.