The St Nicholas Monastery at Mesopotam — five kilometres south of Delvina, on the road to Saranda — is one of the more unusual Byzantine buildings in southern Albania. Founded in the 13th century, the monastery is now ruined except for the katholikon, a stone church with a distinctive double apse and an outer wall covered in carved reliefs of animals: griffins, lions, eagles, dragons.
The iconography is unlike anything else in Albanian church architecture and has been variously attributed to Norman, Comnenian Byzantine, or even Romanesque influences. The site is unlocked and free; the surrounding monastery buildings are overgrown but the church itself has been partly restored, and the carvings are still strikingly clear.