Davit Gareja monastery held in its sandstone cliff against striped hills

Christianity

დავითგარეჯა

Davit Gareja

“Cut into the rock of the half-desert, a place that lived out silence”

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Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0

Scenes

Rooms cut into rock — fifteen centuries of stillnessVyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0
A small chapel on a ridge with only the horizon leftVyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0

Meaning

In the middle of a half-desert where striped hills roll to the horizon, caves hollowed from the sandstone sit beside a red-tiled bell tower, and only the sound of wind passes.

A complex of cave monasteries founded in the sixth century by David Garejeli, held to be one of the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers who came from Syria. Hundreds of cells and chapels cut into the sandstone are scattered across several valleys, and the caves of the Udabno monastery keep frescoes from the ninth to thirteenth centuries. Regarded as the cradle of Georgian monasticism and mural painting, it has been destroyed and abandoned more than once, yet monks have returned and prayer continues here.

Voices across time

“David from Georgia has carried away the grace of the holy city in three stones.”

— The vision granted to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, as the Life of David of Gareja tells it · 6th-century tradition

Roads through this light

✦Georgia — The Land of the Vine Cross→

“Caves in the half-desert, cut from sandstone by those who walked away from the cities”

Field notes

Location
Gareja · Georgia · N41.4° · E45.4°
Best time
Spring, in the short season when green touches the half-desert
Getting there
About two hours by road from Tbilisi, then on foot up the hill path.
Etiquette
This is a living monastic community — quiet is kept, and the frescoes are never touched.

Sources

  • · Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • · Georgian National Tourism Administration
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