Have you ever seen a city or a village, where there are hundreds of dwellings and houses and where there are no inhabitants? Have you seen a "Dead" city where people lived 50 years ago?

8 km East from Goris, on an altitude of 1580 m above sea level, amongst the rocks, caves and gently inviting nature is found one of the most interesting sights in Armenia: Old Khndzoresk. This is a unique habitat, where every visitor feels as if the time has stopped. People have lived in this area, cut from the civilized world throughout centuries. They have lived amongst rocks; have protected themselves from enemies, from cold and from heat, from rains and animals by the nature itself. Strangely enough people have lived in these caves up to 1958, when Armenia was far an industrially developed country. The instinct of continuation of their family line was established so deeply in people of this city during millenniums, that they ignored all achievements of science and continued to live in caves. Old Khndzoresk was the largest village in Eastern Armenia. In 1913 there were 1800 houses, 7 functional schools out of which 2 were parochial and 5 were private.

Old Khndzoresk expended on both slopes of the mountain. These slopes had no flat areas necessary for construction of houses. And because of this, people used natural and man made caves on these slope as dwellings. Many of these dwellings were 20-30 m high from the ground, arranged one over the other so that the ceiling for one house was the floor for the other. These cave dwellings are many centuries old and the cave city itself seems to be more then 1000 years old. There were 4 churches in Old Khndzoresk: St. Hripsime, St. Tadeos, Church of Anapat (Desert) and Old Church. In lover Khndzoresk, in the old graveyard, under a basalt plate with annotations, is buried Mkhitar Sparapet, (Mkhitar the troops leader), the hero of Armenian nation from the first quarter of XVIII century, who fought against Persian and Turkish invaders. Old Khndzoresk is a historical monument and is under government’s protection.

New Khndzoresk emerged during the 50s of 20th century. There are approximately 2000 inhabitants in New Khndzoresk. The main field of occupation for these people is agriculture, especially stock rising.