Ubisa Monastery

Ubisa is one of the places where medieval Georgian painting survived nearly intact. The monastery sits on a wooded slope in the Dzirula valley north-west of Kharagauli, and is barely visible from the road.

The church of St George was founded in the 9th century by Grigol Khandzteli. It is a small single-nave barrel-vaulted basilica, plain from outside, with the apse hidden inside the thickness of the east wall and open porches added later on the south and west. In the yard stands a four-storey tower whose inscription gives an exact date, 1141, and names its builder, Simon Chkondideli, in the reign of King Demetrius I. Fragments of the enclosure wall are also 12th century.

The reason to come is inside. The whole interior was painted at the end of the 14th century; inscriptions credit the master Gerasime and his pupil Damiane, the painter. The programme includes:

• Christ in Glory on the vault, and a Deesis

• the Last Supper and the Nativity, in unusually crowded compositions

• a cycle from the life of St George, to whom the church is dedicated

• the Ancient of Days, a rare subject

Specialists read Damiane's work as a meeting of Byzantine, Serbian and Russian currents, but the elongated figures and the calm, almost withdrawn faces are entirely Georgian. The colour has darkened over six centuries, yet the storytelling is still easy to follow.

The church is a working monastery again; the monks keep bees and sell honey by the gate. Between the tower, the old walnut trees and the forest behind, the yard is very quiet — Ubisa is one of the few important sites in Imereti where tour buses rarely stop.