EXPLORATIONS IN VELIKO TARNOVO (Konstantin Totev – konstantin_totev@abv.bg, Evgeni Dermendzhiev, Plamen Karailiev) The church explored was situated to the south of St. Forty Martyrs Church. Its nave was constructed over a pavement of stones and fragmentary bricks of the 13th – 14th century. The church was built in the 14th century. It was single-nave and single-apse, with a narthex, covered with a barrel-vault, and 15 m by 6.30 m in size. There was an exonarthex, additionally built from the western side of the church, thus extending its length to 19.20 m. The walls of the church were 90 cm wide and were preserved up to 3 m in height. The northeastern corner of the nave, part of its eastern wall and the apse, 1.65 m wide and 0.70 m deep, were discovered. There were fragmentary frescoes preserved on the northern wall of the apse, showing the polystaurion of a bishop who was depicted in the scene of worshiping Christ child as the Eucharistic victim (Melismos). The frescoes dated to the middle of the 14th century. The finds included fragmentary steatite icons, two iron procession crosses, a glass icon lamp, and parts of polycandelon. During the end of the 14th – 15th centuries, the church was already not functional and two ovens were built inside. During the Ottoman period in the 15th – 16th centuries, the church was reconstructed and transformed into baths. The floor of the bathroom was explored. It was constructed of stone slabs plastered with mortar and paved with marble slabs. The floor was supported by 21 small columns of the hypocaust, which were arranged in three parallel rows consisting of seven columns each. Terracotta tubes of the water-conduit were documented on the eastern wall of the bathroom and a chimney was discovered. The baths had four rooms: a bathroom situated in the nave of the church, a dressing room situated in the narthex, a stokehold from the southern side and a gallery from the northern side. A female burial (No. 23) of the Christian necropolis of the 16th – 17th centuries was discovered close to the baths. The grave goods included gold-lace textile and a copper finger-ring. In that period, the apse of the church was filled with stones paved with slabs and an iron cross was found on the slabs. Probably, during the 17th century when the baths were already not functional, the building was used as a cemetery chapel.