Saint George’s Church, Tsamakaberd
Saint George’s stands in the centre of Tsamakaberd, now a district of Sevan. The inhabitants of what was then a separate village paid for its construction in the late nineteenth century. The Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin records the church’s close ties with the monks of Sevan Island.
An eleventh-century cross-stone is built into the outside of the east wall. The south sacristy preserves another, from the twelfth or thirteenth century, with a damaged left edge. A cemetery south of the church contains monuments dating from the eleventh to nineteenth centuries, evidence that commemoration here predates the village church.
During the Soviet era the church was used as a storehouse and fell into partial ruin. Valter Marutyan, whose family came from Tsamakaberd, undertook its restoration. On 23 June 2007 Bishop Markos Hovhannisyan consecrated the altar and the baptismal font.