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Mtskheta and nearby Djevari Church
– an extraordinary survival from the
6th century – acknowledged by
UNESCO. Georgia converted to
Christianity in the fourth century
through the compelling acts of St
Nino, a young woman who came from
nearby region – probably Armenia –
and made a strong connection with
the royal family. Together with
Georgia’s other patron saint, St
George, St Nino is particularly
revered throughout the region,
symbolised by the distinctive inverse
Y-shaped cross visible throughout
Georgia as a reference to the
makeshift cross St Ninio carried into
Georgia made from vine branches
tied together with her own hair. Holy
Trinity Cathedral features these Figure 3. Sveti-Khoveli
saints prominently, and draws upon Cathedral, section, in Natalia
the early Christian and medieval Teteriatnikov, ‘Upper-Story
architectural and iconographic
Chapels Near the Sanctuary in
vocabulary of key religious centres
Churches of the Christian East’
outside Tbilisi.
Holy Trinity cathedral also Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 42
makes productive use of tension (1988), pp. 65-72 (p. 67)
between tradition and modernity in
the architectural statement it boldly makes. Georgian sacred architecture has
its own unique form, based on interlocking cross-plan geometry that features a
cylindrical projection topped by a conical roof (usually tiled, though not
exclusively) within which sits a broad central dome. The effect is both lofty and
thickly fortress-like, and this architectural trajectory never resulted in a turn to
Gothic elements; a cross-section of the central dome at Sveti-Khoveli
Cathedral articulates characteristic Georgian Orthodox architectural features
when working on a large scale (Figure 3).
Holy Trinity Cathedral’s design began with an architectural competition,
and across a protracted process the architect Archil Mindiashvili was

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