The remains of a medieval church were documented a decade ago at the foothill of the archaeological site “Carevi Kuli”. The church is located 200m to the northeast of the fortress, or just around ten metres away from the last house of the city of Strumica. The excavations of this sacral building started in 2015 and continued in 2016. The goal was complete uncovering of the structure and documentation of the phases of construction.

According to the location of the church we can conclude that it was part of the urban core of medieval Strumica, built along one of the communications that lead to the fortress “Carevi Kuli”. The building is one-aisled church with a three-sided apse, 10.20 metres long and 5.90 metres wide. It was built of bricks, stones and lime mortar. It had three entrances, of which the main one was on the western side, and the other two were on the north and south sides. Modest remains of fresco decoration with stylized floral motifs were documented on both sides of the western entrance. According to the architecture and the modest wall painting, the church can be dated to the end of the 12th century or the first half of the 13th.

Few phases of repairs and additions are documented. At the beginning it functioned as a small one-aisled church and later it was converted into a chapel. The main entrance in the western wall was sealed in this phase due to the construction of a tomb in the interior. The tomb was built of bricks and lime mortar and it is located under the entrance. Its dimensions are: 2.04 metres length, 0.70 metres width and 0.84 metres depth. The tomb was dug into to the floor of the church.

The excavations revealed large concentration of disturbed osteological material from multiple burials. A complete skeleton from the last burial was also revealed. The deceased was a man, buried in stretched position with crossed hands on the chest, and west-east orientation. A silver coin was discovered near the head and a silver finger ring was found on the right hand. The silver coin is a Venetian grosso of Lorenzo Tiepolo (1268-1275), while the finger ring can be dated at the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century according to the shape and technique of manufacture.

The floor of the tomb was made of the same bricks as the walls of the church, which confirms that it was constructed while the church was still active. Based on this, we can conclude that if the last burial in the tomb was performed at the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century, the first burials were much earlier, probably in the first half of the 13th century when it was constructed.

Important discovery in the excavations of the church are the three tombstone slabs in secondary position, one of which has an inscription in three lines, written in old Slavic Cyrillic letters. According to the characteristics, the inscription dates to the first half of the 13th century, the same period as the construction of the tomb. We can assume that the tomb and the slabs belong to one unit, built in honour of some important person of Strumica, perhaps a city official or somebody rich enough to construct a church for his rest place.

The excavations in 2016 were focused on the area to the south of the church where 21 burials were revealed. They belong to different periods, beginning with the late middle ages (13th – 14th century) when the church existed, the Ottoman medieval period (15th – 17th century), all to the first decade of the 20th century. Two auxiliary structures were revealed to the south of the church which were part of this small religious complex in the urban core of medieval Strumica.