Vank Cathedral is located in Jolfa neighborhood (Isfahan). This church is one of the historical churches of the Armenians of Isfahan and was built during the reign of Shah Abbas II.
The area of Cathedral is 8731 square meters, of which 3857 square meters is the building and the rest of the green space and the Vank Garden. They have built two reception rooms on either side of the entrance to the van. At the top of the entrance, the bell tower is built on three floors, on the second floor of which is a large clock weighing three hundred kilograms. On the four sides of the tower, four circular clock plates are installed, the diameter of each plate is 104 cm. The bell tower and its clock were donated to the church by Mardiros Hordanian in 1931.
Unlike the ancient Armenian churches, which are mostly built of stone, the Church of the Assumption is built of raw clay. The outer wall of the church is covered with bricks and the inner wall is covered with plaster, which is painted and decorated. The church has two domes; The small dome is located on the public residence, and the large dome is built on the front of the church altar. The height of the church walls from the courtyard to the roof of the second floor is 11.75 meters. Inside the church, at a distance of 25.6 meters from its western wall, two square columns, each of which is two meters long, have been constructed. In the western part of the church, four high arches have been built using part of these columns and the bases of the side walls; The height of this arch is 10/25 meters. The small dome of the church, which is not very high, is located on this arch.
The dome of the ancient Armenian churches is conical, but the dome of Vank Church is similar to the dome of Safavid Persian mosques. On the roof of the church, at the upper part of the entrance, between the western wall and the edge of the small dome of the church, in a small square-like area, a small bell tower has been built, which is the second bell tower of the church. Each side of this square is 2.75 meters. At the intersection of both sides of the square, a brick column is built; The height of these columns is three meters and at a height of 2.5 meters, both columns are connected to each other by a wooden beam. From the top of the beams, both columns are connected by a truncated arch. The border of the truncated arches and columns is covered with bricks.
All the walls, the arches, the collar of the dome, the inside of the dome and all the corners of the church are painted and decorated with oil paint. Most church murals have biblical themes and depict images from the birth to the ascension of Jesus Christ. On a part of the walls of the church, the Day of Judgment, the judgment of the Day of Judgment and heaven and hell can be seen. All the decorations, paintings and gilding of the church were paid for by a person named Khajeh “Audicus Stepanos”. The painters of these images were all Armenian masters, including the caliphs “Hovhannes Merkoz”, “Priest Stepanos” and “Master Minas”.
This church is unique among Armenian churches in terms of gilding and gilding.
One of the most famous works kept in the Vank Cathedral Museum is a strand of hair belonging to an eighteen-year-old girl on whom Vahram Hakopian wrote a passage from the Torah in Armenian in 1974 in a diamond pen. Donated and visitors can see this sentence on the hair with a microscope installed for this purpose.
