Gurjaani Kvelatsminda

Kvelatsminda is the only church in Georgia with two domes, and that single fact makes it a compulsory stop for anyone who cares about architecture. It stands a couple of kilometres above the town of Gurjaani on a wooded slope, well off the main road and easy to miss.

The church dates from the 8th or 9th century. It is a three-nave basilica, but over the central nave sit two domes, one behind the other. Nothing else in Georgian architecture repeats the arrangement, and its origin is still argued about: some scholars look for Armenian and Syrian parallels, others treat it as a local experiment that was tried once and never repeated.

The fabric is river cobble and brick, and the proportions are low and heavy, closer to a fortified hall than to the tall, sharp churches of the later medieval period. From outside the domes are almost invisible until you come round to the south; inside, the doubled vertical space registers immediately and is genuinely disorienting. Fragments of 11th and 12th-century wall painting survive, badly damaged, though figures can still be read in places.

A bell tower and later additions share the yard, with oak forest all around. The church is in use, but the daily congregation is small; more often than not the door is open and there is nobody inside.

Gurjaani itself is known for wine and for a mud-treatment spa, though the town is unremarkable to look at. Kvelatsminda is the reason to turn off here, and half an hour on this slope explains more about early Georgian building than a whole day in the valley below.

One further oddity is worth noticing as you walk out. The two domes are not identical twins — the eastern one sits slightly higher and is a little wider, which suggests they were not planned in a single stroke.