Geghard (Armenian: Գեղարդ, meaning "spear") is a medieval monastery in the Ararat province of Armenia, being partially carved out of the adjacent mountain, surrounded by cliffs.

While the main chapel was built in 1215, the monastery complex was founded in the 4th century by Gregory the Illuminator at the site of a sacred spring inside a cave.

According to Armenian historians of the 4th, 8th and 10th centuries the monastery comprised, apart from religious buildings, well-appointed residential and service installations.

Ayrivank suffered greatly in 923 from Nasr, a vice-regent of an Arabian caliph in Armenia, who plundered its valuable property, including unique manuscripts, and burned down the magnificent structures of the monastery.

Though there are inscriptions dating to the 1160s, the main church was built in 1215 under the auspices of the brothers Zakare and Ivane, the Zakarid generals of Queen Tamar of Georgia, who took back most of Armenia from the Turks.

The monastery was defunct, the main church used to shelter the flocks of the Karapapakh nomads in winter, until resettled by a few monks from Ejmiatsin after the Russian conquest.

Today the monastery complex is located at the end of the paved road, and the walk up from the parking lot is lined with women selling sweet bread, sheets of dried fruit (fruit lavash), sweet sujukh (grape molasses covered strings of walnuts) and various souvenirs.

Walking across the complex will take one to the secondary entrance on the east, outside of which is a table for ritual animal offerings (matagh), and a bridge over the stream.

The one- and two-storey residential and service structures situated on the perimeter of the monastery's yard were repeatedly reconstructed, sometimes from their foundations, as happened in the 17th century and in 1968–1971.

More than twenty spaces, varying in shape and size, were carved, at different levels, in solid rock massifs surrounding the main cave structures.

Those in the western part of the complex were for service purposes, and the rest are small rectangular chapels with a semicircular apse and an altar.

There are many often richly ornamented khachkars cut on rock surfaces and on the walls of the structures or put up on the grounds of Geghard in memory of a deceased or in commemoration of someone's donation to the monastery.

Though there are inscriptions dating to the 1160s, the main church "Kathoghike" was built in 1215 under the auspices of the brothers Zakare and Ivane (of the Zakarid-Mkhargrzeli family), the generals of Queen Tamar of Georgia, who took back most of Armenia from the Turks.

The arched top of the arcature of the cupola's drum has detailed reliefs showing birds, human masks, animals heads, various rosettes and jars.

This style of "stalactite vault" with a central hole for natural light is thought to have been derived from the muqarnas of Islamic architecture, starting from the 11th century in Armenia.

The ornamentation of the tympanum consists of large flowers with petals of various shapes in the interlaced branches and oblong leaves.

It was built during the reign of Avag (died in 1250), son of Ivane and nephew of the Amirspasalar (Commander in chief) of the Zakarid army, nicknamed "Long Arm" (Zakare II Zakarian).

An inscription records that it was the work of the architect Galdzak, who also constructed the other rock-cut church and the jhamatuns within a period of some forty years.

The main rectangular space of the church is crowned with a tent and complicated with an altar apse and two deep niches, which gave the interior an incomplete cross-cupola shape.

Just as in the vestry, the inner surface of the tent is hewn in the graceful shape of stalactites which also decorate the capitals of the half-columns and the conch of the altar apse.

Apart from stalactites in the shape of trefoils and quatrefoils, the decoration of Astvatsatsin church features ornaments of rosettes and various geometrical figures.

The columns hewn in solid rock support rather low semicircular arches fitted into trapeziform frames which, forming a square in the plan, serve as a foundation for the spherical cupola above them with a light opening in its zenith.

It is partly hewed in massive solid rock; its composition was, in all probability, largely influenced by the shape of the cave which existed there.

The chapel, rectangular in plan and having a horseshoe-shaped apse, is adjoined, from the east and from the northeast, by passages and annexes hewed at various levels and even one on top of another.