Vagarshapat (modern Echmiadzin), originating in the seventh century BCE as the town of Vardkesavan, lies on the plain of the Aras River, twelve miles (twenty kilometers) west of Yerevan in west-central Armenia.

It had been renamed Vagarshapat about CE 140, when the Parthian king Vologases III made it his capital.

Upon the conversion of Armenia to Christianity about 300, Vagarshapat had become the residence of the Armenian patriarch.

In 344 the town ceased to be the Armenian capital, and in 453 the patriarchal seat was removed elsewhere, but in 1441 Kirakos, the supreme catholicos, or primate, of the Armenian Catholic Church, brings back the seat to Vagarshapat, which hereafter will remain the home of the “catholicos of all Armenians.”