Sioni Cathedral

Sioni is the church Tbilisi has rebuilt more often than any other. It stands on the right bank of the Mtkvari in a knot of narrow streets, and from outside it looks almost modest — until you realise the building has been wrecked and put back up in nearly every century of its existence.

The first church here went up in the sixth or seventh century. Then came the Arabs, Jalal ad-Din in 1226, Timur, and the Persians. The core of what stands now is thirteenth century, but the dome, much of the walling and the facade details were rebuilt between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The invasion of Agha Mohammad Khan in 1795 damaged it again.

Two things hold the attention inside. The first is the cross of St Nino, made of grapevine and, by tradition, bound with the saint's own hair; it sits in a silver case near the altar on the north side. The second is the wall painting, carried out in the 1850s by the Russian artist Grigory Gagarin over older frescoes — a decision Georgian art historians still argue about.

Across the street stands a free-standing brick bell tower of 1425, the oldest surviving in Tbilisi, and beside it a second, three-storey tower from the early nineteenth century.

Until Sameba was consecrated in 2004, Sioni was the patriarchal cathedral. It is quieter now than Sameba, and far darker: even at midday it depends on candlelight, which gives it a completely different feeling from the huge new church across the river.

From outside the cathedral is faced in yellow tufa and the dome belongs to a nineteenth-century restoration, which is why it looks newer than it is. Sioni is also hemmed in: houses come right up to the walls, and there is no vantage point close by from which the whole building can be seen at once. The only place it reads as a single mass is from the opposite bank of the river, near Metekhi bridge.