Gergeti Trinity Church

Some buildings are beautiful in themselves; Gergeti Trinity is beautiful because of where someone dared to put it. The small stone church stands alone on a grassy ridge at about 2,170 metres, high above the village of Stepantsminda in the Greater Caucasus, with the glaciated cone of Mount Kazbek rising behind it. From the valley floor it looks almost impossibly remote — a dark silhouette on the skyline — and from the church itself the view runs down into the Terek valley and up to the snowfields of one of Georgia's highest peaks.

Georgians call it Gergetis Tsminda Sameba, the Holy Trinity of Gergeti, after the village on the slope below. It was built in the fourteenth century as a cross-in-square church: three rectangular arms and a rounded apse gathered under a tall drum pierced by ten windows. The walls are faced in dark grey stone, carved here and there with modest ornament, which lets the building sit in the landscape rather than against it. A separate bell tower on a square base and a low enclosing wall complete the ensemble.

Its isolation made it a refuge. In times of danger, tradition holds, the most precious relics of the Georgian church were carried up from Mtskheta to be hidden here, among them the cross of St Nino — the grapevine cross associated with the conversion of Georgia to Christianity in the fourth century. Under Soviet rule services were banned and the church was closed; it was returned to the Georgian Orthodox Church only in the 1990s and is once more a working church.

Come early or late, when the light slants across the ridge and picks out the stone against the snow of Kazbek. The walk up is part of the experience: the church appears and disappears behind folds of the slope until, on the last rise, it stands against the mountain exactly as in every photograph — and still surprises.

Getting there

The church sits above Stepantsminda (also known as Kazbegi), about 150 km north of Tbilisi along the Georgian Military Road — a drive of roughly three to three and a half hours through the mountains. Shared minibuses run from Tbilisi's Didube bus station to Stepantsminda. From the village it is about an hour and a half on foot up the slope, or a short ride by 4×4 taxi. The nearest practical airport is Tbilisi International Airport (TBS).