The Church of the Ascension of Jesus Christ in the Žiča Monastery is situated 32km from Vrnjačka Banja and near the city of Kraljevo. It was built by the Serbian King Stefan Prvovenčani (reigned 1196-1227) and his brother Saint Sava (ca. 1175-1236) in 1207 and was finished of 20 May 1221, on the feast of Ascension when the Great Council was held (Teodosije 139-141). It was the see of the Serbian Orthodox Archbishopric since 1219 and a place of coronation of the Serbian Kings (after Stefan had received the royal wreath from Pope Honorius III in 1217 and was coronated in Žiča). It is also a mausoleum of the First-Crowned Serbian King.
The ground plan of the church follows the pattern formed previously in the Church of the Holy Mother of God in the Studenica Monastery with some differences visible at the altar space, making it a model of all future buildings of the 13th century, of the so-called Raška monumental architecture. The church was built in several stages. Firstly, a single nave edifice was erected with three bays and a narthex with a parekklesion on both of its sides, semicircular apse and a dome. The present Western section was separated by a narthex wall until the end of the 13th century, when the wall was removed and the narthex was joined to the nave in a single space. The lateral arms of the transept were erected next to the central bay. After 1220 (but prior to the Great Council in 1221) the prothesis and the diaconicon were added in the altar. By 1230 a spacious exonarthex with a bell-tower was built on the Western side, which has a katechoumemion on the upper floor and a parakklesionon the upper floor of the tower. Another special feature of this church is its façade, which is painted in red. It is believed that the builders came both from Byzantium and the Adriatic. The church was fresco painted by artists from Byzantium. There are two layers of frescoes in the interior: the older one, created around 1220, belongs to the so-called Golden Age of Serbian painting and the younger one, from the beginning of the 14th century, belongs to the painting from the period of the Serbian King Stefan Uroš II Milutin (reigned 1282-1321), created under the influence of the so-called Palaiologan Renaissance style.