The Green Monastery (Chitakhevi St George)

The Green Monastery is named for a colour, not a metaphor. In the narrow Chitakhevi gorge, where the stream runs right along the edge of the monastic yard, moss covers the stones, the walls and the tree trunks; sunlight filters through leaves and the whole place is sunk in green light. On a summer afternoon, when Borjomi is at thirty degrees, you want a sweater here.

The community was founded in the 9th century, traditionally by two disciples of the Assyrian Fathers named Christopher and Theodore. The present church of St George is largely 15th century: a small, plain stone building with a free-standing bell tower that is the most elegant thing on the site. Almost no painting survives inside, and the interior is austere and dark.

The stones in the streambed are flecked with red, and local tradition holds that this is the blood of monks killed in the 16th century, when the army of Shah Tahmasp burned its way through the valley. The colour in fact comes from iron in the rock, but the history behind the legend is real enough: most of the monasteries of Samtskhe emptied in exactly that century and did not recover for four hundred years.

The gorge above the monastery continues as a forest track, and half an hour further up there is nothing but beech and the stream. It is one of the easiest ways near Borjomi to get a sense of what the gorge forest actually looks like without committing to a full national park route.

The monastery has been active again for the last twenty years, with a handful of monks who keep a garden and a few animals. The grounds are small: church, bell tower, two or three outbuildings and a wooden footbridge over the water. That modesty is the point. This is not a monument that demands three hours, but forty minutes that stay with you.