Alaverdi, Ikalto, Nekresi — the churches around Telavi worth the drive

Two things explain almost every old church in this valley.

The first is a group of monks. In the sixth century thirteen Syrian ascetics arrived in Georgia under John of Zedazeni and scattered across the country founding monasteries. Three of them stopped within twenty kilometres of this house — Joseph at Alaverdi, Zenon at Ikalto, Abibos at Nekresi — and all three of those places are still there.

The second is Shah Abbas I of Persia, who came through in the mid-1610s and burned most of what they built. Nearly every ruin you will stand in around Telavi has the same two dates attached to it: a foundation somewhere in the first millennium, and a fire in 1615 or 1616.

Before you go: the practical bit

Entry is free at all of these, which is not what people expect. Alaverdi has been open roughly 08:00 to 18:00; the smaller ones keep looser hours and Batonis Tsikhe back in town, which is a museum rather than a working church, is the one that closes on Mondays and charges.

Dress code is real and it is enforced. Women need covered shoulders and a long skirt — not trousers — and a headscarf; men need long trousers and sleeves. Alaverdi keeps a rail of wrap skirts and scarves at the gate and you take one on the way in, free. The smaller places may not, so carry a scarf if you are going to Ikalto or the Shuamtas.

No photography inside the churches at Alaverdi. Outside is fine and the outside is the point anyway.

These are working monasteries, not monuments. There will be monks doing their day around you, and at Nekresi and New Shuamta there will be almost nobody else at all.

Alaverdi — 20 km, and the one you actually have to do

The cathedral of St George was finished in 1011 and it is fifty metres to the top of the dome, which made it the tallest church in Georgia for the best part of a thousand years — until Tbilisi’s Sameba cathedral was consecrated in 2004. From the road across the flat vineyard land it comes up out of nothing, and the scale does not really register until you are inside and looking straight up.

It is also a working marani. The monks made wine here from the eleventh century until the Soviet period; the cellar was excavated, the old qvevri found, and winemaking restarted in 2006. Five monks run it, in qvevri, in the traditional Kakhetian way, and they bottle under a label that just says the year the monastery started: SINCE1011.

Go early. It is on every coach itinerary out of Tbilisi and it is a completely different building at nine in the morning than at noon.

Ikalto — 8 km, and the one we would send you to second

Ikalto is half-ruined, quiet, and usually empty, and it is the more interesting stop of the two.

Zenon founded the monastery here in the late sixth century. In 1106, under David the Builder, Arsen Ikaltoeli founded an academy on the site — the first institution of its kind in Georgia. It taught theology, rhetoric, astronomy, philosophy, geometry and music, and also pottery, metalwork, viticulture and winemaking, on the sensible grounds that a monastery has to eat. Shota Rustaveli, who wrote the Georgian national epic, is said to have studied here.

Shah Abbas burned the academy in 1616 and it never reopened. What is left is the shell of the lecture hall, the churches, and — this is the part people remember — qvevri still buried in the ground among the stones, mouths open to the sky, where the students made the wine.

It takes half an hour and there is usually nobody there.

The two Shuamtas — 7 and 9 km, and nobody goes

Up the Gombori road, in beech forest at about a thousand metres, are two monasteries two kilometres apart and a thousand years apart.

Old Shuamta (Dzveli Shuamta) is a fifth-century basilica with two seventh-century domed churches beside it, in a clearing, abandoned in the sixteenth century and left alone since. It is small, very old, very quiet, and there is nothing there to sell you anything.

New Shuamta (Akhali Shuamta) was built a couple of kilometres away in the sixteenth century by Queen Tinatin, wife of King Levan of Kakheti, and it is a working nunnery. The story attached to it — that she dreamt of the place as a child and recognised it years later on the road — is the kind of thing that is either true or has been improved for four hundred years.

If you are driving to or from Tbilisi over the pass anyway, these are ten minutes off the road and almost no visitor stops.

Gremi — 28 km, and the ghost of a capital

Gremi was the capital of Kakheti. King Levan founded it in the sixteenth century as a trading town on the Silk Road, and the Church of the Archangels on its bluff was built and painted between 1565 and 1577. Levan is buried inside, on the right as you go in. There is a three-storey palace and bell tower next to it, and a small museum in the tower.

Shah Abbas razed the town in 1615 and it never came back. What you are looking at from the top of the tower is the shape of a city in the fields below — the church survived because the Shah chose not to burn churches, which is a strange detail to stand in the middle of.

Nekresi — the view, and the argument about the date

Furthest out, up a forested hill above the valley near Shilda. You leave the car at the bottom and take the shuttle up; it is a nominal fare, a lari or so, and walking it is possible but steeper than it looks.

The complex is a stack of buildings from about six different centuries: a three-church basilica from the sixth or seventh, a Church of the Archangels from the eighth or ninth, a St George from the seventeenth. The famous one is the Small Church, traditionally dated to the second half of the fourth century, which would make it one of the oldest church buildings in the country. Excavation has since argued that nothing on the hill is earlier than the sixth. The argument is unresolved and, standing there, quite enjoyable.

Abibos, the monk who founded it, spent his life arguing with Zoroastrians in a region that was then under Persian religious pressure, and was killed for it.

The reason to make the drive, honestly, is the view. It is the best in Kakheti — the whole Alazani valley, the Caucasus wall behind it, and the vineyards going out to the horizon in rows.

How to actually fit them in

If you have one morning: Alaverdi, then Ikalto on the way back. Twenty-eight kilometres round trip, two and a half hours including the looking, and you will have seen the biggest and the oldest-feeling.

If you have a day: Alaverdi early, Ikalto, lunch, then north-east to Gremi and Nekresi. That is a full day and a proper one.

If you are driving over the pass anyway: stop at the Shuamtas. Ten minutes each.

What to skip: trying to do all six in a day with a driver on the clock. Four churches is the point at which they start to blur, and Kakheti is not short of them.

And then have lunch

Every one of these is within twenty minutes of a cellar, which is not a coincidence — the monasteries were the wineries. Alaverdi and Ikalto both sit among vineyards, and there are family maranis on the road back to town.

If you are staying with us, tell us the night before and we will point the day at both: a church in the morning, somebody’s yard at one o’clock. That combination is what a day in Kakheti is actually for.