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Bana

Turkey / Erzurum / Senkaya /
 church, interesting place

Bana (Georgian: ბანა) or Banak (Armenian: Բանակ) is a ruined early medieval cathedral in present-day Erzurum Province, eastern Turkey, in what had formerly been a historical marchland known to Armenians as Tayk and to Georgians as Tao.

It is a large tetraconch design, surrounded by a near-rotunda polygonal ambulatory and marked with a cylindrical drum. After the construction of this monastery by the Georgian king Adarnase II of Iberia in the 7th century the church was reconstructed by another Georgian ruler Adarnase IV of Iberia at some point between 881 and 923, and emerged in written records in the 11th-century Georgian chronicles. Henceforth, it was used as a royal cathedral by the Bagrationi dynasty until the Ottoman conquest of the area in the 16th century. The former cathedral was converted into a fortress by the Ottoman army during the Crimean War in the 1870th monastery was almost completely ruined during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78.
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   40°40'4"N   42°16'12"E
This article was last modified 10 years ago