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Figure 4. Interior of Holy Trinity Cathedral (image:author)

eventually selected; he worked closely with the local engineering firm Capiteli,
who specialise primarily in large civic projects. The cathedral building project
attracted controversy from the beginning, largely due to its site. Remains from
the Khojavank Armenian cemetery were at risk, and there were vocal
complaints of desecration, claiming that insufficient care was given to this
sensitive burial place. The cathedral rests on an extensive piazza, beneath
which are several spaces for cathedral administration and community activity.
The cathedral’s architect took the core principles of Georgian Orthodox
church design and through a double strategy of stretching and multiplication
has produced an epicentre for the Georgian Orthodox community that does
assert a new and compelling architectural intentionality.
The architecture is certainly proclaiming continuity, but it also invests in
revivalism and to the eyes of a traveller visiting Georgia from the UK, its
clearest parallel is Giles Gilbert Scott’s Liverpool Cathedral, designed following
a competition on the brink of the 20th century and both boldly assertive and
carefully restrained in its use of Gothic Revival elements. Holy Trinity
Cathedral in Tbilisi, like Liverpool, concentrates zones of ornamentation

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