Green Monastery (Chitakhevi)

The Green Monastery, Mtsvane Monastery in Georgian, is a small working monastery in a narrow wooded gorge near the village of Chitakhevi, on the road from Borjomi to Akhaltsikhe, inside Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park. Its church of St George is a three-nave basilica from the late 9th or 10th century. The walls are rough stone, but the columns, arches and pilasters are cut from greenish stone, which gives the monastery its name. Beside it stands a two-storey bell tower from the 15th or 16th century with a tiny chapel on the ground floor.

The setting is the reason to come. From the main road a lane runs about 1.2 km up the side valley through the forest, and the church appears in a clearing beside a stream. Monks returned in 2003, so this is a place of worship first: keep voices low and dress modestly. Inside, fragments of 12th or 13th century paintings survive in the apse and on the west wall. It makes an easy stop on the way to Akhaltsikhe or Vardzia.

The basilica dates from the late 9th or 10th century and the bell tower from the 15th or 16th. Local tradition says that in the 1550s soldiers of the Persian Shah Tahmasp I massacred the monks here and that the stones of the stream turned red with their blood, which made the site a place of pilgrimage. The Borjomi valley emptied in the 18th century through war and banditry, and the monastery lay abandoned until it was cleared in 1978, restored in 1988 and resettled by monks in 2003.