When Tosya Gharibyan asked her husband to dig a basement under their house to store potatoes, she had little idea that the underground labyrinth he would eventually produce would prove to be one of Armenia’s major tourist draws.
Their one-story house in the village of Arinj outside the capital, Yerevan, might not look like much, but today it brings in visitors from all over the globe after a 23-year labor of love by Tosya’s late husband, Levon Arakelyan.
They come to see a twisting network of subterranean caves and tunnels known as “Levon’s divine underground.”
Photo: AFP
In the cold and quiet, Tosya leads tourists through corridors that connect seven chambers adorned with Romanesque columns and ornaments like those on the facades of medieval Armenian churches.
“Once he started digging, it was impossible to stop him,” she said of the project that began in 1985. “I wrangled with him a lot, but he became obsessed with his plan.”
A builder by training, Levon would toil for 18 hours a day — only pausing to take a quick nap, and then rush back to the cave, confident that he was being guided “by heaven.”
“He never drew up plans and used to tell us that he sees in his dreams what to do next,” Tosya said.
Over more than two decades, he hammered out the 280m2 space, 21m deep into strata of volcanic rocks — only using hand tools.
“My primary childhood recollection is the loud knock of my father’s hammer heard at night from the cave,” said his daughter, Araksya.
At the start he had to break through a surface layer of black basalt, but after a few meters, Levon reached much softer tufa stone and the work progressed.
He pulled out 600 truckloads of rocks and earth, using only hand-held buckets.
Levon died in 2008 at the age of 67 from a heart attack after destroying the last wall that separated two tunnels.
A decade after the project’s completion, Tosya also runs a small museum commemorating her husband’s work in the village of about 6,000 people.
The underground complex has several analogues in the world.
An eccentric man named William Henry “Burro” Schmidt spent more than three decades digging an 805m tunnel to transport gold through a granite mountain in California, beginning his work in the early 1900s during the state’s gold rush.
In Ethiopia, a man named Aba Defar began carving churches on a mountainside after claiming divine inspiration from years of dreams.
Today, the Armenian cave features prominently in travel brochures, regularly drawing visitors.
Milad, a 29-year-old Iranian tourist, called the maze an “amazing place,” saying it made him realize just “how boundless the spiritual and physical capabilities of a person can be.”
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel
RSS