During the 40th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Istanbul, Turkey in July 2016, “Archaeological Site of Ani” was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as a relic historic city of the medieval period on one branch of the Silk Roads. Ani is a largely unexcavated medieval urban site located on a plateau at Turkey’s border with Armenia, which visually and physically integrates remarkably well-preserved monumental buildings, above numerous passages and caves that extent into the surrounding valleys.
Ani has the rare advantage of conveying a sense of the medieval urban fabric peculiar to the north-eastern Anatolia and the Caucasians; thanks to the presence, at the site, of almost all the architectural types that emerged in the region in the course of the six centuries from 7th to 13th; and thanks also to their pristine preservation, without later settlement layers and building-scale modifications, despite devastation brought by waves of wars, earthquakes, and other calamities.