The mansion of the Melik-Shahnazaryans in Shushi

The dominant feature of the composition is the interior courtyard. Along this courtyard's eastern and western sides are the inner buildings adjoining the enclosure walls, with the best-preserved structures located on the western side. These consist of three rooms running the entire length of the wall. The central room opens fully onto the courtyard, while the two end rooms—approximately the exact dimensions, rectangular in plan, vaulted, and each with two expansive courtyard-facing windows—are accessed through the central room. The end rooms also connect to the towers via corner entrances. Wall niches are found in the interior walls of these rooms.

In the northeastern corner of the courtyard, adjacent to a tower, another vaulted room has been preserved; from it, a door leads to a second vaulted room that extends to the melik mansion’s entrance. The arched doorway of the first room opens onto the inner courtyard, with two arched wall niches in its eastern interior walls. The second room features a more decadent interior: all its interior walls contain wall niches, and at the center of the northern wall, between two niches, there is a fireplace. The southern wall includes two wide, arched openings facing the courtyard (Fig. 3).

Inside the eastern enclosure wall, a series of five additional arched wall niches set at regular intervals indicates that there were also structures on that side, though none have survived. While nothing remains on the southern side, it is possible to reconstruct a room adjoining the enclosure wall and a central open-fronted space between the two, which opens onto the inner courtyard. This is suggested by the surviving ruins in the area—some wall segments and the southern entrance—and by the three-hall construction on the opposite, western side (fig. 2).

The peripheral rooms adjoining the towers in the Melik mansion had vaulted ceilings, some remnants of which are still visible. Nothing remains of the coverings over the central, open-fronted halls, suggesting that those were wooden roofs supported by wooden columns along the front. Similar partially open halls can be observed in the second Melik mansion at Horekavank and the Melik Israyelyan Melik mansion at Mokhratagh (https://monumentwatch.org/).

The Melik-Shahnazaryan melik mansion of Shushi was built with roughly hewn basalt. Its enclosure walls and towers have survived to heights ranging from 3.0 to 5.0 meters and are 1.2 meters thick. The interior walls of the rooms measure between 0.8 and 1.0 meters thick (fig. 4). The stones in the corner sections of the walls and the arches are somewhat dressed. The entrance to the Melik mansion is more carefully executed using dressed stone: a single-piece stone lintel is placed at a height of 2.1 meters, set on single-piece projecting jambs, and framed by a segmental arch (Fig. 5).