Zvartnots is a ruin with a great deal of ghost left in it. The name means roughly the temple of the celestial angels, and it was built in the seventh century by the Armenian Catholicos Nerses III, who wanted a church of astonishing size and shape: a round, three-storey building rising from a cross-shaped plan, with a high central dome and a ring of columns. For a few centuries it dominated this plain between the Hrazdan river and the old capital of Vagharshapat. Then it collapsed, probably in an earthquake some time before the tenth century, and the stones lay forgotten under a mound until archaeologists dug them out in the early twentieth century.
What survives is a platform of pale volcanic tuff, the bases of the columns and a scatter of carved capitals, some with eagles and bunches of grapes in beautifully cut stone. Fragments are laid out in the grass, and a small museum next to the site explains what the whole thing looked like. It is a place for slow looking and one of those spots where the imagination has to do part of the work. On a clear day Mount Ararat fills the southern horizon, snow-capped and enormous, and the whole composition of ruin, mountain and sky explains why the site is UNESCO-listed.
The ride is short and urban rather than adventurous. From Yerevan you take a busy highway west, with heavy traffic and drivers who treat lane markings as a suggestion, and the road runs flat across a plain of orchards and apricot trees. Nothing here is technical. The riding value is in the approach and the light: early morning when the sun slants over the ruins, and late afternoon when the tuff glows pink. The airport of Yerevan lies a few minutes away, so planes pass low overhead now and then.
Vagharshapat, three kilometres on, is the spiritual capital of the Armenian Church, home of the cathedral of Etchmiadzin, and a more sensible place for fuel, food and rest than the village next to the site. Summer is hot and dry, spring is lovely, and autumn gives you clear air and the harvest of grapes and apricots. Taking a coffee before visiting the church complexes is wise, because the queues build up by midday.