The church sits on the holy site where a group of unnamed nuns following Gayane and Hripsime were martyred during the time of the conversion of Armenia to Christianity in the year 301 AD.

The 5th-century Armenian historian Agathangelos wrote that the young and beautiful Hripsime who at the time was a Christian nun in Rome, was to be forcefully married to the Roman emperor Diocletian.

At the southwest end of the building, excavations uncovered the remains of a single-chamber church constructed on a stepped platform, thought to have been a 4th-century memorial chapel.

Very little ornamentation adorns the main body of the church except for a geometric pattern that is around the mid-portion of the exterior of the drum, some khachkars built into the upper walls, and a geometric cross design at the exterior of the eastern wall with rosettes and two small cross shaped windows that let some light into the apse of the church.

A single large arched opening centered in the middle of the front façade leads into the gallery, where directly across from it is the main portal to the church.

The frames surrounding the windows and the large arched entry are highly ornamented with geometric patterns, rosettes, and khachkars.