Jvari Monastery

Jvari is the building Georgian architecture starts from. It was raised between 586 and 605 on the rocky hill above Mtskheta, on the spot where Saint Nino is said to have set up the first wooden cross in the 4th century. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1994 as part of the Historical Monuments of Mtskheta.

Architecturally it is a turning point. Jvari established the tetraconch plan — four apses around a central domed space, fully symmetrical — and that model was copied across the Caucasus for the next several centuries. The building itself is almost aggressively plain: no frescoes, no gilding, only stone, proportion and a column of light falling from the dome.

The other half of Jvari is the view. From the edge of the rock you look down on:

• The confluence of the Aragvi and the Mtkvari, where two differently coloured rivers meet without mixing at first
• Mtskheta laid out like a model, with the dome of Svetitskhoveli at its centre
• The old royal plain and the first ridges of the Greater Caucasus behind it

Lermontov wrote Mtsyri from this landscape, which makes the hilltop a minor pilgrimage for Russian readers as well as Orthodox ones. The monastery is active, and at night it is floodlit and visible from the town below.