Svetitskhoveli Cathedral

The story Georgians tell is this. A Jew from Mtskheta named Elias was in Jerusalem at the Crucifixion, bought Christ's robe from a Roman soldier at Golgotha, and carried it home. His sister Sidonia took it from him, and died on the spot from the force of what she felt. Her hands could not be opened, so she was buried holding it. A cedar grew out of her grave. When St Nino had it felled to build Georgia's first church, one of the seven columns cut from it rose into the air by itself and would not come down until she had prayed all night. That column is what the cathedral is named after, and Sidonia is still under the floor.

Where Georgia became Christian

Mtskheta was the capital of the kingdom of Iberia, and St Nino chose the point where the Aragvi runs into the Mtkvari for the first Georgian church. It was built in the fourth century under King Mirian III, and Georgia adopted Christianity as its state religion in 337 — the second country in the world to do so, after Armenia.

The name records the legend. Sveti means pillar; tskhoveli means life-giving. The Cathedral of the Living Pillar. Sacred liquid was said to flow from the column and to cure any disease. There is an icon of the whole scene on the third column on the left as you come in — Sidonia's body at the root of a cedar stump, an angel lifting the column towards heaven, St Nino in front, King Mirian and Queen Nana to either side. You will recognise it, because it is reproduced in churches all over Georgia.

Four buildings on one spot

What you walk into is the fourth church here, and the layers below it were only properly understood in living memory. A restoration in 1970–71 under Vakhtang Tsintsadze found the base of the three-storey basilica that King Vakhtang Gorgasali built in the late fifth century, on top of Nino's church; you can see its remains in the western and south-eastern parts and under the pillars beneath the floor. In the southern arm of the cross they found the remains of an even older wooden church.

The present cathedral went up between 1010 and 1029, commissioned by the Catholicos Melchizedek I in the reign of King Giorgi I, and built by an architect named Arsukidze. It is cross-in-square, the style that became standard in Georgia after Bagrat III unified the country, in which the dome is carried on all four sides.

Then the usual Georgian history: damaged by Arabs, by Persians, by Timur — a major reconstruction followed Tamerlane's destruction at the end of the fourteenth century — by earthquakes, and later under Russian and Soviet rule. The present dome is fifteenth-century, with its upper part rebuilt in the seventeenth, when it lost height and was reduced in size. The walls around the compound, with their eight towers, are King Erekle II's, 1787, and the top storey was built for fighting from: it has gun emplacements.

The visitor's cheat sheet

What to see, in the order you meet it

Outside: read the walls

Walk round the outside before you go in; the eleventh-century carving is the best-preserved part of the building. The facades carry blind arcading that genuinely rises and falls with the height of the wall behind it, so the whole surface seems to be in slow movement. Every window is framed with an ornamental band and stylised decoration like peacock tails.

On the east face, two tall deep niches cut hard shadows into the lit wall. An inscription above the windows says the church was built by the Catholicos Melchizedek, and above that are two low reliefs: an eagle with open wings and, below it, a lion. Lower down are two bulls' heads, which are not eleventh-century at all: they are survivals from the fifth-century church, and they are pagan folk carving pressed into Christian service.

On the west, a large window fills most of the gable, decorated with the Ascension — Christ enthroned between two angels — the triangle of the composition set neatly inside the triangle of the cornice. The original sculpture has not survived; what is there has been restored more than once, most recently in the nineteenth century.

The architect's hand

Now go round to the north wall and find a small relief of a right arm and hand holding an L-square, the stonemason's tool. The inscription reads: The hand of Arsukidze, slave of God, may forgiveness be his. Another inscription on the east facade says plainly that Arsukidze did not live to see the church finished in 1029: This holy church was built by the hand of Thy wretched servant, Arsukidze. May your soul rest in peace, O Master.

Around that hand has grown the best-known legend in Georgian architecture, told in Konstantine Gamsakhurdia's novel The Hand of the Great Master: that a priest who had been Arsukidze's own patron and teacher grew so jealous of what his pupil had built that he used his influence with the king to have the young man's right hand cut off. In the novel the king is jealous too, over a woman named Shorena. There is no documentary evidence for any of it. The inscriptions say only that the architect died before his church was done. Every Georgian knows the story; it is worth knowing that it is a novel.

If you cannot find the relief outside, there is a reproduction of it immediately behind the font, just inside the door.

The font, and the kings in the floor

To the right of the entrance is a stone baptismal font of the fourth century, thought to be the one in which King Mirian and Queen Nana were baptised. It is the oldest object in the building by six hundred years.

Then look down. Svetitskhoveli was where Georgia's kings were crowned and where they were buried. Ten are known to be here; six tombs have been found, all in front of the altar. Vakhtang Gorgasali is in the central part of the cathedral, marked by a small candle-fortress in front of his slab. Erekle II is identifiable by the sword and shield carved on his. Beside him is his son George XII, in marble — the last king of Georgia. Also here are David VI, George VIII, Luarsab I, and members of the Bagrationi family including Tamar, first wife of George XI, whose epitaph of 1684 is written in both Georgian and Persian script.

Sidonia's grave and the Holy Sepulchre

On the south side, a small stone church has been built inside the cathedral. It is a deliberate, symbolic copy of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, put up between the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries to make a claim: that because Christ's robe is here, Svetitskhoveli is the second most sacred place on earth after the church in Jerusalem. It was rebuilt in the seventeenth century, and its paintings — scenes from the lives of King Mirian and Queen Nana, and portraits of Constantine and Helena — are by G. Gulzhavarashvili, from the 1830s.

In front of it, the westernmost structure lined up with the columns between the aisle and the nave marks Sidonia's grave, with the remains of the life-giving pillar. This is the centre of the whole thing — the reason for the church, the name, and the pilgrimage — and it is not signposted in any way a visitor would notice. Traces of the fourth-century church have been found here too.

The second structure along the southern aisle was built in the seventeenth century as the throne of Catholicos Diasamidze. It is no longer used as one: the Georgian patriarch's throne now has to stand in the centre of the church.

The frescoes that are left

After the whitewashing, careful restoration has brought some of the painting back, and two things are worth hunting for. There is a thirteenth-century Beast of the Apocalypse, and there are figures of the Zodiac — which is not what most visitors expect to find on the wall of an Orthodox cathedral, and is one of the reasons this building is more interesting than a first glance suggests.

Be clear about what else you are looking at. The large figure of Christ at the altar was painted by a Russian artist in the nineteenth century. Most of the icons are twentieth century, a good many of them copies of older icons and frescoes from elsewhere in Georgia; the originals are in the national museums. And look at the stonework for carved grapes, which appear in Georgian churches everywhere and are a straight reference to a country that has been making wine for eight thousand years.

The yard

Do not leave through the gate immediately. Archaeologists found the eleventh-century house of the Patriarch at the southern part of the wall in 1963, and the remains of the two-storey palace of Patriarch Anton II inside the churchyard. In the south-western corner are the remains of a palace and an eleventh-century two-storey tower over the gate, faced in stone, with arcading, a vaulted passage on the ground floor, and two more bulls' heads on its west face. An inscription says the Catholicos Melchizedek built it — the same man who commissioned the cathedral.

Jvari, on the ridge

Look up from the cathedral yard and you will see a small dark church on the hill across the river. That is Jvari, built in the 580s–590s on the spot where St Nino is said to have raised the first cross in Georgia, and it is part of the same UNESCO listing. It is a twenty-minute drive round and up, and the view from it back down over the confluence and the cathedral is the photograph everyone comes to Mtskheta for. Do not do Svetitskhoveli without it.

Tickets and tours

Don't miss

• The architect's hand North wall, outside: a right hand holding a mason's square, and an inscription asking forgiveness for Arsukidze. A copy stands inside behind the font.
• Sidonia's grave South side, in front of the Holy Sepulchre chapel. Christ's robe is said to be under it, and nothing tells you so.
• The chapel inside the church A stone copy of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built to claim second place among the holy places of the world.
• Erekle II's tomb In the floor before the altar, with a sword and shield carved on it. His son George XII, the last king of Georgia, lies beside him.
• The Zodiac and the Beast of the Apocalypse Thirteenth-century, and among the very few frescoes to survive the whitewash.
• The bulls' heads Two on the east facade, two more on the gate tower. Fifth-century, and not remotely Christian in origin.
• The 4th-century font Right of the entrance, and probably the font of Georgia's first Christian king.
• Jvari On the ridge above the town, 6th-century, same UNESCO listing, and the view that makes sense of the whole site.

Insider tips

Avoid Saturday if you want to look at the building. Georgian couples marry at Svetitskhoveli in numbers, one wedding following another all day. It is a genuinely lovely thing to walk into and it makes serious sightseeing impossible.

Go on a weekday morning and stay for a service if one starts. Georgian Orthodox chant in this building — which was designed for its acoustics — is worth rearranging a day for.

Combine it with Jvari. The two are one UNESCO listing and one story, and the twenty minutes it takes to drive up the hill is the best twenty minutes of the trip.

One thing to know before you form a view of the building's condition: a UNESCO report in 2010 found structural problems threatening the cathedral's overall stability. Restoration and monitoring have been continuous since. If there is scaffolding somewhere, that is why.

Where to stay and eat nearby

Almost everyone stays in Tbilisi and comes out for half a day. Mtskheta itself is small, pretty and thoroughly geared to visitors, with a row of restaurants near the cathedral doing Georgian standards — khachapuri, khinkali, mtsvadi — and several wine shops selling local qvevri wine. It is a pleasant lunch, and prices are lower than in the capital.

More churches in the Caucasus

• Gergeti Trinity Church — the church under Mount Kazbek, three hours north up the Georgian Military Road.
• Etchmiadzin Cathedral — over the border, and rooted in a strikingly similar 4th-century conversion story.
• Geghard Monastery — cut into a cliff, and built by the generals of a Georgian queen.

See all the Georgian churches in this guide →