Manglisi Cathedral

Manglisi carries two histories: a very old church and a very 19th-century resort. The town sits on the Trialeti range at 1,200 metres among pines, less than an hour from Tbilisi, which makes it one of the capital's most accessible summer escapes.

Tradition places the foundation of the cathedral in the 4th century, soon after the conversion of Kartli, which would put it among the earliest Christian sites in the country. The building you see, however, is largely 11th century: a domed church on a tetraconch plan, with semicircular apses on all four sides. It was substantially repaired in the 19th century and the interior whitewashed, so little old painting remains. Outside, ornamental carving survives on the drum and around the windows.

The town's second layer is Russian imperial. A military garrison was stationed at Manglisi in the 19th century and officers brought their families up for the summer; the air, the pines and the cool became a reputation. Soviet rest houses were added later. Some now stand abandoned, others still work, and on summer weekends the place fills with Tbilisi families.

Manglisi is also a junction. The road on from here runs west to Tsalka and the Trialeti plateau and north down into the Algeti valley, so it works better as the first stop of a longer day than as a destination on its own. The combination is odd, and that is what makes Manglisi worth the drive: a thousand-year-old cathedral, collapsing sanatoria and pine forest sharing one small town.