Lomisa Church

Lomisa is a small stone church on a bare ridge at about 2,200 metres, and one of the most genuinely living folk shrines in Georgia. It is reached on foot from the village of Mleta on the Military Highway — a climb of roughly two hours up a grassy spur, with the Aragvi valley dropping away behind you and the Ksani side opening ahead.

The building itself is modest: a low hall church of undressed stone, dark inside, with a small vaulted chamber and virtually no decoration. Hanging in it is a heavy iron chain. Pilgrims lift it or put it over the shoulder while making a vow, and the weight is the point — this is a shrine where things are done rather than looked at.

The story attached to the place is old and widely known. Georgians taken captive to Persia prayed to St George; an icon of the saint was carried out of captivity on the horns of a bull, and where the exhausted animal lay down the church was built. Whatever the history, the cult is older than the church and parts of it are plainly pre-Christian: animal sacrifice, oaths sworn on a chain, a shrine on a summit rather than in a village.

Lomisoba, the feast, falls on the seventh Wednesday after Easter. On that day several thousand people fill the ridge, sheep and bulls are brought up and slaughtered, and there is wrestling and drinking. It is not staged for visitors, and photographing it without asking is badly received. Some families still keep older rules about who may enter which part of the shrine; watch what local pilgrims do and follow it.

On an ordinary summer day you may find the ridge empty apart from horses, with a view running from the Kazbegi massif to the headwaters of the Ksani.