Tanahat

The small church is the only surviving part of a monastic complex set in a very beautiful, completely isolated location in the Sissian region, in the southern part of the country. It is a single-nave basilica with a markedly horseshoe-shaped apse, flanked on the south side by a sacristy room and a portico on four columns (now destroyed). In plan it appears very close to the church of Diraklar (in the north) and probably derives from similar Syrian models. The portico on the south side, onto which the entrance of the church opened, also served as a shelter for pilgrims and perhaps for catechumens, who were not admitted into the sacred space. The triumphal arch of the apse, miraculously preserved amid the general ruin, rests on flattened capitals decorated with unusual floral motifs of distinctly oriental taste. The masonry in the north area shows clear signs of rebuilding and restoration. Finally, the truncated-pyramid shape of the small sacristy room is of great interest.