Touring Georgia Outside Tbilisi (Part I of III): Mtskheta

Svetitskhoveli Cathedral with a street dog posing in the front

Today was the day to see Georgia outside Tbilisi. Tbilisi tourists -- and they are legion -- who want to see the areas outside of the city typically head either east, to the Kakheti wine country, or the west, for a three-stop tour of Mtskheta, Gori, and Uplistsikhe. How many wineries in the world do you have to see before you've seen them all? I know wine tours are great fun if you want to drink wine all day with someone non-drinking doing all the driving. But I pointed my tour guide to the west.

The first stop of this multi-stop (and multi-post) tour was the town of Mtskheta, with two churches to see there. The first is in the lowlands, near the Kura River that eventually flows through the middle of Tbilisi.

This is the lowlands destination: Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. Carpets for sale! There always are carpets for sale at all the tourist hot spots in the Caucasus countries.

The cathedral is well-fortified.

Time to enter through the exterior walls:

And into the cathedral itself:

Let's have a look inside:

Like all great Christian church architecture, the design is meant to lift the eyes upwards. That means, practically speaking, the photos are in "portrait" and not "landscape" setting.

This is the walled-off altar area, with an enormous portrait of Christ:

The wall that separates the tourist zone for the sanctuary is, itself a beautiful sight:

 

Very nice. And it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, as it dates back to the fifth or sixth century A.D. and the early years of the Georgian Orthodox church. But only so many photographs looked decent given the dark lighting and the rule against flash photography.

Time to head to the next stop on the day's journey: 

Ascending the hill in Mtskheta to the second stop: the Jvari Monastery.

Like the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, this too is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

And like the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, it too comes with sleeping doggos. 

This is the view down on the town of Mtskheta. Zoom in and you can see the large Svetitskhoveli Cathedral on the right side of the picture.

Going into the Jvari Monastery:

This has a little more natural light than the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral:

So it's not just the candle power lighting these non-flash photos.

This shade of blue is quite common in Orthodox Christian archietecture, for those of us who are not Orthodox.

It signifies heaven. I am guessing the use of this shade of blue in Orthodox Christianity explains its use on the Greek flag, but that could be a coincident. Which I doubt since the Greek flag also features an Orthodox cross.

The monastery, not surprisingly, was much smaller than the cathedral. Much less time to explore.

But impressively old, as was the cathedral.

The interior is nice, but, of course, it is the physical setting on a bluff high above the Kura River looking down on the town of Mtskheta that makes the Jvari worth a visit.

Time to get back to the car for the next stop on the day's journey: the City of Gori.