Surb Hovhannes Church

Surb Hovhannes Church — Armenian for "Saint John" — stands in the village of Melikgyugh in the Aparan area of Aragatsotn region. It dates to 1891, when what had been a small chapel was rebuilt and expanded into a full church.

The church operated until 1935, when Soviet authorities ordered it closed. It stayed shut for sixty years, reopening only in 1995, when Catholicos Garegin I — head of the Armenian Apostolic Church — consecrated it. That consecration was the first he performed in that office.

The church is active today, serving Melikgyugh and the villages around it.

Surb Hovhannes Church is in Melikgyugh village, near Aparan, in the Aragatsotn region, about 56 km north-northwest of Yerevan in a straight line.