Tadeosvank

This large monastery, also called Kara Kilise (black church) in Turkish, is today in Iranian territory, in the Azerbeidjian region, 20 km from the town of Makou. Founded, according to tradition, by St. Thaddeus on the site of a pagan temple, and destroyed by an earthquake in 1319, it was rebuilt in 1329, then renovated and enlarged several times up to the 19th century. The main building of the monastery is the church, whose two drums with pointed roofs are clearly visible from afar, situated in the centre of a large rectangular fortified enclosure equipped with cylindrical corner towers and all the rooms for everyday use. It consists of: - an older part, of the apsed domed-hall type inscribed in a rectangle, built mostly of dark grey basalt, with few or no decorative motifs except for the drum, which has alternating horizontal rings of white and black stone; - a more recent part, much larger, built adjacent to the first and on the same axis; its square plan, certainly inspired by that of Etchmiadzin, has four free-standing piers, two projecting apses that are polygonal on the outside, and a smaller niche to the west for the entrance; this part, built in yellow stone, towers with its bulk over the earlier building; its outer surface is entirely covered with rich bas-relief decoration (prophets and saints) and is articulated in the lower part by blind arcading and in the upper part by a motif of paired half-columns: a continuous band of zoomorphic arabesques separates the two orders; - an unfinished small portico adjoining the part described above and supported by four piers, whose inner and outer surfaces are likewise covered with blind arcading and with figurative or geometric motifs in bas-relief.