By Prof. Giorgi Pkhakadze, MD, MPH, PhD · 15/09/2026
You see Alaverdi long before you reach it. On the flat floor of the Alazani valley, twenty kilometres from Telavi, a single pale cone rises above the vines and the poplars: the dome of a cathedral that, when it was finished around 1010, was the tallest building in Georgia and would have been among the tallest in Christendom. Chartres and Cologne were not yet begun. For half a millennium nothing in Georgia stood higher.
Who built it
The cathedral of Saint George was raised by King Kvirike III of Kakheti on the site of a 6th-century monastery founded by Joseph of Alaverdi, one of the thirteen Syrian fathers who brought monasticism to Georgia. Kakheti was then a separate kingdom, and Alaverdi was its statement: a triconch church on a monumental scale, plain outside, soaring inside, with a drum and dome that the eye cannot quite take in from the floor. Earthquakes brought the dome down twice; Persian armies burned it; Tamerlane’s troops used it as a stable. Each time it was rebuilt to its original height.
Inside
The interior is almost bare — whitewashed in the 19th century over medieval frescoes, some of which have been uncovered: a 15th-century Virgin in the apse, fragments of saints on the piers. The bareness is the point. The space is fifty metres from floor to dome, lit from the high windows, and silent; visitors tend to stop talking without being asked. The graves in the floor are Kakhetian kings and queens. A cloister of monks’ cells, a bell tower, a refectory and the ruins of a Persian governor’s summer palace stand inside the fortress wall around it.
The wine
Alaverdi has made wine since the 11th century, and the monks resumed after the Soviet interruption in 2006 in the original cellar, with the original qvevri, some of which are a thousand years old. Their Rkatsiteli and Saperavi are sold under the monastery’s name and served at the tasting room by the gate — a monastery wine tasted in view of the monastery is a Kakhetian experience with few equals. Alaverdoba, the festival in late September, brings the whole region to the walls for a week of prayer, trading and, inevitably, wine.
Nearby
Ikalto, ten minutes south, is the ruined academy where Shota Rustaveli, Georgia’s national poet, is said to have studied in the 12th century; its wine-press courtyard and vine-carved stones are the origin story of Kakhetian viticulture. Together with Alaverdi it makes a morning; Telavi, with lunch and the palace, makes the afternoon.
See it with GTour
Alaverdi and Ikalto open the Telavi & Kakheti day and the first day of the Grand Wine & Heritage tour; they are also the second morning of the Rtveli harvest tour.
This story in Georgian — ქართულად: shenidasveneba.ge
ქართულად: ალავერდი — ტაძარი, რომელზე მაღალი ევროპაში 500 წელი არაფერი აშენდა
