Church of the Mother of God in Vardenis
The church in central Vardenis occupies the site of an earlier sanctuary. Archbishop Mesrop Smbatyants visited in 1863 and recorded the settlement under the names Vasakashen and Basargechar. The earlier church had been repaired four years before his visit. Beside the sanctuary he copied two epitaphs, one for the cleric Sargis, who died in 1551, and another for Hovhannes, who died in 1583.
The present church was built from 1902 to 1912 and consecrated on 12 May 1912. Its dressed basalt blocks vary in colour. The prayer hall has a cross-shaped plan and three arched doors. Long narrow windows in the high drum light the interior from above. Cross-stones and grave markers in the grounds belong to earlier generations and predate the church one sees today.
The church closed in 1937 and the local collective farm used the hall to store grain. Worship resumed with a reconsecration in 1957. Repairs followed between 1980 and 1986. A further campaign on the western bell tower began in 2018, completing a part of the original building project that had remained unfinished for more than a century.