David Gareja Monastery Complex
Interesting facts
- According to legend, when the summer heat withered the herbs that David and his disciple Lucian lived on, deer came to them, and Lucian milked them for food.
- The deer legend appears in the cave frescoes of Udabno, where painted scenes show deer seeking David's protection from a dragon and Lucian milking a doe.
- After giving up the throne in the 12th century, King Demetre I, author of the famous hymn "Thou Art a Vineyard", chose David Gareja as his place of confinement.
- One of the first offshoots, founded by David's disciple Dodo, is still known as Dodo's Rka, literally "the horn of Dodo".
- The monastery grew further in the 9th century under the guidance of the Georgian saint Hilarion the Iberian.
- The Bolsheviks closed the monastery in 1921, and it stood empty of monks until Georgian independence in 1991 allowed monastic life to return.
- When Soviet shelling resumed in 1988, about 10,000 people marched in Tbilisi and students staged a hunger strike at the monastery until the army base was removed.
- In May 1997, hundreds of activists pitched their tents in the middle of the Georgian army's firing range here, blocking manoeuvres until military exercises were banned.
- Beyond its monasteries, the Gareja area holds protected wildlife and traces of some of the oldest human settlement in the region.
Why it is worth it
On the dry ridge of Gareja, where eastern Georgia fades into steppe, a sixth-century hermit started something that became one of the strangest monastic landscapes in the Christian world. Saint David, one of the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers who came to Georgia to spread monasticism, settled in a cave here; his disciples Dodo and Lucian founded their own communities nearby, and over the following centuries the soft sandstone of the ridge was hollowed into hundreds of cells, churches, chapels and refectories. The setting is half-desert: bare, eroded hills streaked in yellow, red and pink, with the Iori plateau spreading below.
The complex reached its height between the late eleventh and early thirteenth centuries, the golden age of the medieval Georgian kingdom, when new monasteries - Udabno, Bertubani, Chichkhituri - were carved into the cliffs and their walls painted. These frescoes are the reason to come. At Udabno, a steep walk along the ridge above the still-active Lavra, the cave churches keep vivid paintings of the Annunciation and, in the old refectory, the Last Supper. There are also royal portraits: Queen Tamar and her son Lasha-Giorgi at Bertubani, King Demetre II at Udabno, David the Builder at Natlismtsemeli. They are among the most direct likenesses of medieval Georgian rulers that survive.
The history is a hard one. The Mongols devastated the monasteries in 1265, and in 1615 a Safavid army struck on Easter, massacring the monks and destroying manuscripts and works of art. Monastic life was revived after Onopre Machutadze became father superior in 1690. In the Soviet period the ridge served as a military training ground, and in 1987 thousands of Georgians marched in Tbilisi in protest. Today the Lavra is again home to monks, while the upper monasteries run along the crest that marks the boundary with Azerbaijan, a line still disputed around Bertubani.
What stays with visitors is the combination: painted saints glowing inside rough caves, a monastery that looks less built than grown out of the rock, and the silent, colour-banded hills all around. The walk from the Lavra up to Udabno and back takes about an hour and a half, over rocky, sometimes exposed ground, with the ridge falling away to the plains on the far side.
Getting there
The monasteries lie in Kakheti, roughly 60-70 km southeast of Tbilisi; Rustavi is the nearest Georgian city, about 36 km away. Tbilisi International Airport (TBS) is some 43 km in a straight line. The drive from Tbilisi takes about two hours, the last stretch on rough road. Public minibuses go only as far as the village of Udabno, so most visitors come by car or on an organised trip.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
David Gareji is a rock-hewn Georgian Orthodox monastery complex located in the Kakheti region of Eastern Georgia, on the half-desert slopes of Mount Gareja on the edge of the Iori Plateau, some 60–70 km southeast of Georgia's capital Tbilisi. The complex includes hundreds of cells, churches, chapels, refectories and living quarters hollowed out of the rock face.
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