DZHERDZHEVDENSKA CHURCH – YAKORUDA

Dzherdzhevdenskata or St.George’s Day church is an early Christian church, which is located at the outskirts of the town Yakorouda.

The church was discovered during the construction of the temple “St. George” in 1997 – 1998. National History Museum conducted excavations in which were discovered walls of the altar of an ancient church. The temple is a three-nave one-apse basilica from the end of the V and the beginning of the 6th century. The dimensions of the temple are relatively large 12 x 24 meters. The Church, destroyed to a large extent by the river, was the center of a late ancient and early medieval settlement, associated with the neighboring fortress Kalyata.

East of the church was discovered a small necropolis of 40 Christian burials in 29 graves, which allows to date the settlement and restore somewhat the history of the medieval Yakoruda, located in the valley of Yakorushtitsa until the 17th century. The story tells of a Janissars corpus that destroyed the church in May 1666.