When Catherine II resettled the Armenians from the Crimea to the Don, they missed their homeland very much. And they decided to build something resembling their native Crimea on the Don. When the future founder of the Don Armenian monastery, Archbishop Joseph Argutinsky, was visiting the Nakhichevan Martin Torosyan, they walked around the neighborhood together. The archbishop liked the surroundings of the present Surb-Hacha – a river, an island, hills, springs and a grove, and he decided that this would be the best place to build a monastery. The construction of the monastery began in 1786 and lasted 6 years. The church was built according to the project of architect Ivan Starov, who was the creator of the Tauride Palace and the Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg. To the east of the church was a two-story bishop's house. It housed a comprehensive school founded in 1791, later reorganized into a seminary with a boarding house. In 1920, the monastery ceased to exist, but divine services in the church of Surb-Hach continued for another 11