ST. MARY MAGDALENE MONASTERY (Snezhana Goryanova – sgoryanova@gmail.com, Vladislav Todorov) The Early Christian basilica existed from the middle of the 4th to the end of the 6th centuries AD. It was three-aisled, with one apse, a nave, a narthex, an exonarthex, two rooms from the northern and the southern side, and a square burial chamber outside the southeastern corner of the nave. The basilica was 40.80 m long and 17 m wide, built of roughly-cut stones bonded with mortar with occasional bricks in the structure. Each stylobate supported eight pillars, 96 cm by 65 cm in size, built of bricks and stones bonded with mortar. The floor was plastered with mortar. The foundation of the wooden rail of the bema was discovered. The exonarthex was 3.55 m wide, opened to the west. Tegulae and imbrices from the fallen roof were discovered. Fragments from wall plaster painted in red, green, ochre and brown were found. So far, 44 Christian graves were explored inside and around the basilica. One of them was discovered in the southeastern burial chamber and probably was related to the construction of the basilica. The grave goods from the cemetery included earrings, bronze and glass bracelets, gilded silver appliqués from a diadem, copper scyphates: a Latin imitative coin of 1205 – 1218, two Latin imitative coins of 1225 – 1228, a coin of the Bulgarian King Konstantin Asen minted in 1262/1263. The cemetery appeared during 1225 – 1250. The buried were both male and female, ranging from babies till 60 – 65 years old people.