Ninotsminda Cathedral

Ninotsminda is one of those rare monuments that is more impressive as a ruin than many churches are intact. It stands in the village of the same name a few kilometres east of Sagarejo, within sight of the main Kakheti road, and most travellers drive straight past it.

The cathedral dates from the second half of the 6th century and is a tetraconch: four apses arranged around a central space, with niches in the corners. This is the same architectural idea realised at Jvari above Mtskheta, but Ninotsminda is larger and a decade or two earlier. For the history of the Georgian domed church, this is close to the starting point.

The dome came down in the earthquake of 1824 and was never rebuilt. What stands now are the tall apse walls, open to the sky, with fragments of carving on the exterior and patches of 16th-century painting inside that weather a little further every winter. Walking into the space is a strange experience: the walls are unmistakably a church, the ceiling is weather.

Two other things share the enclosure:

• The bell tower, a three-storey structure of the 16th century that doubled as the bishop's residence

• The enclosure wall and remains of the episcopal buildings — Ninotsminda was a bishop's seat for centuries, and its bishops carried real political weight in Kakheti

The site is maintained but not made over. Coaches rarely stop, since most groups head straight for Telavi or Sighnaghi. Late afternoon is the time to come: the sun drops inside the shell of the apses and turns the stone warm, and the swallows nesting in the wall cavities come out to feed.

The stone is a warm local tuff that holds late light unusually well, which is part of why the ruin photographs better than it has any right to.