Seljuks sack Ani

August 16, 1064

Alp Arslan's army stormed the Armenian capital and gave it over to slaughter and fire. Contemporary chroniclers described bodies so thick in the streets that one could not walk without stepping on them. The fall of the city of a thousand churches erased Armenia's last functioning kingdom. Ani's massive stone walls and glittering skyline of churches had made it one of the richest cities in the medieval world.