I’ve just been enjoying a beautifully illustrated site about the abandoned Armenian royal city of Ani, unfortunately located in Turkey. It’s a somber thing to read about the destruction of such beautiful monuments, some still completely intact and in use until 1920, due to pogroms, earthquakes, official policies of neglect or “restoration,” and, of course, Muslim religious iconoclasm. Separated by a small river from today’s nation of Armenia, it must be heartbreaking for the Armenians to see from the other bank the continued destruction of such a magnificent heritage: an ancient city still alive in the early part of the twentieth century is now a field of rubble.