St. Tadevos temple in Iran introduced for including in UNESCO's world heritage

PanARMENIAN.Net - Workers of Iranian Cultural Issues Service and Tourism Organization prepared a packet of documents for including St. Tadevos temple (also known as "Kara-Kilisa"-Black Church) in the UNESCO world heritage. They also prepared documents for 4 other churches-St. Stepanos, Soursur, Chupan and the Church of the Blessed Virgin. Soon the list will be passed to the corresponding bodies of the United Nations, Iranian "Parsekh" monthly reports.



According to Mohamed Hassan Hademzadeh, leading expert of the organization in case if the program is approved a group of workers from UNESCO International Council on Monuments and Historical Places will arrive in Iran to examine the situation in churches.



The Church of St. Tadevos is one of the most ancient churches in the world, its construction began more than 1700 years ago. Historians say that apostle Tadevos is buried just here. He used to attend some regions of Armenia and Persia to preach Christianity. The church is situated in Dar-e-Sham village, 16 km West from Djulfa and 3 km South from Arax River.



Soursur is situated in Barun village; it was built in 1314-15 thanks to efforts of archbishop Zakarius. Aiming at preservation of this historical monument during construction of Barun reservoir the government assigned a large territory on the mountainside for the church, which was situated 110 meters high. Currently there are 500 churches in Iran, 44 of that are included in the list of national monuments.