Abstract:

Bitlis, due to its geographical location in the historical process, has preserved its feature of being a city of strategic importance and points to an important geography that has witnessed an uninterrupted settlement. The cosmopolitan structure of Bitlis in Medieval Anatolia has spread to all the development stages of the city and many architectural works belonging to different cultures have survived to the present day as a legacy of this. The diversity of ethnic and religious beliefs has become a cultural dynamic and has allowed the city to have numerous architectural works. Tangible cultural artifacts, which are the memories of living together, appear as historical documents that have transcended the ages and even surpassed the social memory, witnessing that the city is an important historical city, almost like an open-air museum. Almost no research has been done on the churches, which have an important place in the historical urban fabric of Bitlis and their number is too high to be underestimated. In this article, the Bitlis-Yumurtatepe (Papşin) church, which was chosen among the medieval churches in Bitlis, with the aim of filling the relevant scientific gap, is the subject of our study. In this article, it is aimed to make a detailed architectural description of the Bitlis-Yumurtatepe (Papşin) church in the discipline of art history by adhering to the scientific methodology, to make its chronological analysis, to reveal its similar and different features, and to introduce the church, which is in the cultural assets of Bitlis, to the literature.

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