The name of the present-day Ladja neighborhood of Ivailovgrad can be found in eparchial lists from the 9th to the middle of the 10th Century. This is the earliest written source about this outlying district, whose name at that time was Litica, which meant a headquarters for a bishop.
Litica was a bishopric under the supremacy of the Tsarigrad patriarchate during the 9th and 10th Century. Emperor Ioan Kantakuzin mentions Litica in a document from 1342 as a small town in the Eastern Rhodopes. During the same year, the prelate of Litica is specified as a member of Tsarigrad synod, which indicates that he had a bishop’s rank. Litica was still famous as a metropolitan center during the Ottoman reign. In 1652, the Litica bishopric was raised to an archbishopric.
The St Konstantin and Elena Church is a three-shipped pseudo basilica with heptangular apsis. The stone-fence has an old fountain built in it, as well as a stone plastic art showing the “Tree of Life”. Above the western entrance, a two-headed eagle, the symbol of the Tsarigrad patriarchate, is engraved into the marble.
The iconostasis is wooden and polychrome. Above the tsar icons, there are big panas with circles showing bouquets of flowers. The front and upper parts of the iconostasis have a banding curve. The area of the pediment is covered with the beams of the “All-Seeing Goths Eye”. The trellised vine is composed of similar, lively-stylized elements of the “Tree of Life”.
The painted iconostasis and the icons are the work of local masters.

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