Author Topic: How a Record-Breaking Aerial Tramway Helped Save a Centuries-Old Armenian Monastery  (Read 566 times)

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How a Record-Breaking Aerial Tramway Helped Save a Centuries-Old Armenian Monastery
The world’s longest reversible cableway now carries an unprecedented number of visitors to this historic site
By Jennifer Billock
smithsonian.com
July 6, 2018
 

In the years prior to 2010, the historic Tatev Monastery in Armenia’s Syunik province was struggling. Visitor numbers were dwindling and the medieval building complex itself was in desperate need of restoration. At its prime, the 9th-century monastery was a thriving medieval university focused on both scholastic and spiritual studies, but at the turn of the millennium, the historic site, which sits perched on a plateau at the edge of the dramatic Vorotan Gorge, was very much up in the air. Few at the time anticipated the path to restoring the site’s ancient frescos and hand-cut stonework would be built first with 18,871 feet of ultra-modern steel wire and a Guinness World Records certificate.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/aerial-tramway-helped-save-armenias-tatev-monastery-180969545/#fFU1DktpShWJIXs1.99