Armenia
Travel Sights Photo-Stories by Photo-Week.net
Garni Pagan Temple,
Armenia
The
temple stands on a high podium with a two-step base
and is surrounded with 24 Ionic columns. A broad
nine-step stairway leads up to the podium. The sides
of the stairway are decorated with bas-relief,
placed symmetrically relative to the main axis of
the building, showing kneeling Atlantes with
uplifted hands who seemed to support the torches
which used to stand higher. This sculptural motif is
flown from later monuments of East Roman provinces,
such a Niha in Syria (the first century A.D.). In
front of a rectangular stone-floored naos there is a
shallow pronaos with antae and an entrance-way
framed in a platband. The small size of the
sanctuary shows that it contained only a statue of
the deity, and that worship was performed in the
pronaos.
