The Nekresi Monastery, Mortuary Chapel And The Bishop`s Palace , Georgia Stock Photo

The bishop`s palace is a two-storey building, standing a few metres southwest of the church of the Dormition. The windows on both floors have sharply defined horseshoe-shaped arches, an architectural element not in use in Georgia after the 9th–10th century. The mortuary chapel is the oldest extant structure in the Nekresi monastery complex, with the area of four square metres. A long-established belief that it was a proto-basilica built on the place of a former Zoroastrian temple in the late 4th century—and, thus, one of the oldest Christian churches in Georgia—was disproved the 2008–2009 archaeological study which found no evidence of pre-Christian occupation at the site and redated the structure to the 6th century.