With a beautiful photo gallery, a new article devoted to the Khndzoresk cave city in Armenia has been published in the Armenia section of the online version of Smithsonian Institute’s magazine.

“In a rural corner of southeastern Armenia, livestock walk in and out of rooms carved into the cliffside, grazing among the ancient rock-hewn homes of Old Khndzoresk, a multi-level village built into the volcanic rocks. Archaeological evidence suggests habitation of the excavated caves goes back over a thousand year,” the extensive article reads, according to tert.am.

The magazine also touches upon the origin of the name of the city, noting that folklore has two accounts: “khndzor” means apples in Armenian, so the village was perhaps named for the various apple trees growing there; or the name might have origins in “khor dzor,” meaning “deep canyon”—because of the cliffs the town was built into.