S. Step’Anos Naxavka

This monastic complex dedicated to St. Stephen the Protomartyr stands near the Arak's, a little east of Juła, almost on the Soviet border, not far from the village of Darašamb, and still appears to be in good condition. The monastery, enclosed within a rectangular fortified wall with cylindrical towers, consists of the church, to the north, against which a chapel (dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul) is built, and of various monastic buildings that cannot be precisely identified. The church, inscribed in a rectangle, with a dome on a drum, has a plan. The transitions between the central space and the springing of the drum, and those between the drum and the dome, are made by means of elaborate honeycomb devices, frequent in the architecture of Islamic Persia. Externally the drum, with its umbrella roof, has a continuous series of pointed blind arches on twisted colonnettes and rich relief decoration with geometric motifs and panels with figures of saints, crosses, as well as angels and animals.