Thriving Turkish City Gets Reduced To A Barren Wasteland For A Grim Purpose
The city of Ani, located in the north-eastern region of modern-day Turkey, is more than likely the greatest city you’ve never heard of. In the metropolis’ 11th-century heyday, it was a booming power thanks to its location along the lucrative Silk Road trade route. With some 100,000 inhabitants, it was also one of the world’s most populous cities. Fast-forward some one thousand years to the Ani of today, however, and, incredibly, what remains of this once-buzzing metropolis is an abandoned and forgotten set of ancient ruins.
Ghost town
Indeed, today Ani is an almost entirely forgotten city. Once one of the planet’s biggest metropolises, with tens of thousands of residents, Ani is no longer inhabited by humans at all. Instead, it has been reduced to a ghost town. Now, streets that once rang out with a cacophony of voices stand almost silent.
Signs of greatness
Enough remains of the city’s former buildings to tell the tale of its past greatness, though. It may now be abandoned, but the eerie ruins of Ani serve as a latter-day reminder that, at its peak, Ani was among the world’s major cities. These isolated remnants in the Turkish countryside were created by a power to be reckoned with on the world stage.
Prime location
Situated upon highlands whose formation made them hard for enemies to attack and protected to the east by the ravines of the Akhurian river, it’s easy to see why the area attracted settlers. They subsequently constructed city walls in the 7th century AD, when the Kamsakaran family were in power. And it was little wonder that the Armenian ruler Ashot III chose the city to be his blossoming empire’s capital in 961.
Brimming with culture
Moreover, Ashot’s choice of capital city proved to be a judicious one. Both Ani and the wider Bagratuni kingdom flourished between 961 and 1045 AD during an era famed as the “Armenian Golden Age.” In fact, at its peak, the city of Ani was a bustling cosmopolitan center of culture, art and, ideas.
