Handpicked experience · Tblisi
Tblisi, Georgia
A chapel built over a blackberry bush, the graves of the king and queen who changed a state religion, a monk who burned Lenin in public, and a monastery named for a cave.
A hilltop viewpoint over the meeting of two rivers
A UNESCO-listed cathedral in a town you can cross on foot
Two working religious communities rather than museum pieces
Rock-cut chapels at the end of a road most itineraries skip
A private half-day of five to seven hours from Tbilisi to Mtskheta, the capital before the capital, taking in the hilltop church above the rivers, the cathedral in the town, an active convent and a monastery built around a cave in the hills beyond.
Four sites, three of them within a few minutes of each other and the fourth up a rough road into the hills. Short walks at each, with the vehicle doing the distance. Two are working religious communities rather than monuments, which sets the tone for how you move around them.
In the convent garden stands a small chapel over a blackberry bush. The woman credited with converting Georgia is said to have lived in the thicket on this spot before the king's conversion, having arrived with nothing and being given no lodging. Cuttings of the bush are treated as relics. It is a modest thing to build a chapel over, and that is rather the point.
Inside the same complex are the graves of the fourth-century king and queen who adopted Christianity for the kingdom. Their decision made Georgia one of the first states anywhere to do so, and they are buried not in a mausoleum but in a working convent, under slabs that nuns walk past daily.
Also buried here is a twentieth-century monk who, at a May Day parade in 1965, set fire to a large portrait of Lenin in front of the crowd. He was beaten, arrested and confined to a psychiatric institution. He was canonised in 2012, and his grave now draws more visitors than anything else on the site — a queue of people waiting quietly beside a convent wall.
The last stop is reached by a narrow road into the hills. It began in the sixth century when one of a group of Assyrian missionaries settled in a cave here, and the name simply means the cave of Shio. At its height the community numbered in the thousands. In 1202 a bishop had a water conduit cut to bring supply from a spring several kilometres away, and its course can still be traced across the hillside.
Entry charges at the churches and monasteries are settled on site, as are meals. The road to the last monastery is unsurfaced in places and the approach to its chapels is uneven. Shoulders and knees must be covered, and women are given headscarves at the door. Cancellation is free up to a day ahead.
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Five to seven hours, depending on how long you spend at each site. Three of the four stops are minutes apart; the fourth is up a rough road into the hills.
Because the woman credited with converting Georgia is said to have lived in the blackberry thicket on that spot, having arrived with nothing and been given no lodging. Cuttings from the bush are treated as relics.
The fourth-century king and queen who adopted Christianity for the kingdom, under slabs inside a working convent rather than in a mausoleum.
A twentieth-century monk set fire to a large portrait of Lenin at a May Day parade in 1965. He was beaten, arrested and confined to a psychiatric institution, and was canonised in 2012.
The cave of Shio. It grew from the cave where one of a group of Assyrian missionaries settled in the sixth century, and the community later numbered in the thousands.
A conduit cut in 1202 on a bishop's orders to bring water from a spring several kilometres away. Its course can still be followed across the slope.
No — church and monastery charges are settled on site, as are meals. The private vehicle and driver, and the guide where selected, are what the booking covers.