By Prof. Giorgi Pkhakadze, MD, MPH, PhD · 15/09/2026
The Tana valley runs south from Gori into the hills, narrow, green, terraced with vines that produce a sparkling wine of local fame. Ten kilometres up it, on a spur above the river, stands a church that looks like a smaller Jvari — a tetraconch of the early 7th century, built within a generation of the original at Mtskheta by masons who knew it — and inside that church is one of the most complete and beautiful cycles of medieval painting in Georgia. It is called Ateni Sioni, and the road passes it without a sign.
The building
The church dates from the 630s, the last flowering of Georgian architecture before the Arab conquest closed it down for two centuries. Its plan is Jvari’s — four apses around a dome — and its exterior carvings are among the best of the period: a stag hunt, a figure on horseback, a Georgian inscription in the ancient asomtavruli script on the south wall, another in Armenian, and graffiti scratched by pilgrims over a thousand years. The stone is a soft grey-gold that takes the afternoon light.
The frescoes
They were painted in 1080, under King Giorgi II, and they cover the interior from floor to dome: a Nativity with a midwife bathing the child, an Annunciation, a Visitation with the two women embracing in a way no Byzantine painter would have allowed, a Dormition, a Last Judgement, the four Evangelists in the pendentives, and, on the west wall, a row of donor portraits — Georgian kings and princes in their court dress, with names. The style is Georgian at the moment it stops copying Constantinople: the faces are softer, the colours warmer, the compositions more human. The Visitation, in the north apse, is the image people come for; the whole cycle is why they stay.
The frescoes survived because the church was too remote to matter, and because the gorge’s damp did less damage than the sun would have. They were cleaned and consolidated in the 1970s and again in this century. They are unlit; bring a torch, or wait for your eyes.
Visiting
The church is usually locked; the keeper lives in the village and comes when called, and a guide who knows him is worth a great deal. There is no entrance fee, no shop and no café — the vineyard across the road sells wine, and the village of Ateni has a restaurant of sorts. Twenty minutes inside is a revelation; an hour is a pilgrimage. The gorge above the church is good walking, and the Ateni sparkling wine, made from the Chinuri grape, is the right thing to drink afterwards.
See it with GTour
Ateni Sioni is the optional afternoon of the Gori & Uplistsikhe day trip; ask for it when booking and the guide arranges the key.
ქართულად: ატენის სიონი — ფრესკები, რომლებსაც არავინ ნახულობს
