The Church of St Ioan Aliturgetos is located in Nesebar

Nesebar

Nesebar is an ancient town and one of the major seaside resorts on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, located in Burgas Province. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Nesebar Municipality...

, Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

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The church was not consecrated, hence the name - "aliturgetos" is the Greek for "not consecrated". The legend says that one of the builders fell down and got killed. The church canon did not allow a place where a man had been killed to be used for worship. But according to some records services were held in it. The church was badly damaged during the 1913 earthquake (Chirpansko earthquake). Its ruins in the southern part of the peninsula show that it must have been one of the most beautiful medieval churches in Nessebar. It is a dome

Dome

A dome is a structural element of architecture that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. Dome structures made of various materials have a long architectural lineage extending into prehistory....

ed cruciform church with three altar apse

Apse

In architecture, the apse is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome...

s and a narthex

Narthex

The narthex of a church is the entrance or lobby area, located at the end of the nave, at the far end from the church's main altar. Traditionally the narthex was a part of the church building, but was not considered part of the church proper...

. It is 18.5 m long and 10 m wide. The base of the cruciform part of the church is almost quadrangular, shaped by four columns. It has mixed masonry: stone and brick; the facade walls are segmented by blind two-step niche

Niche (architecture)

A niche in classical architecture is an exedra or an apse that has been reduced in size, retaining the half-dome heading usual for an apse. Nero's Domus Aurea was the first semi-private dwelling that possessed rooms that were given richly varied floor plans, shaped with niches and exedras;...

s decorated with various geometrical patterns from bricks and stone cubes (ceramic plastic style). The church was built in the 14th century; it has two entrances, from the north and south, which is rare in the architecture of church buildings.