10 000 Dram Ani Church Tower

Ani was the medieval capital of the Bagratid Armenian kingdom and, at its 10th-century peak, a city of roughly 100,000 inhabitants rivaling Constantinople in scale. The ruins sit today on the Turkish side of the Araks River border, which has made the site both politically charged and largely inaccessible to Armenian visitors for decades. Armenia's 1998 gold issue commemorating Ani arrived the same year the country was still consolidating its post-Soviet currency framework — the dram itself had only been introduced in 1993 to replace the Soviet ruble.