Kashveti Church of St George

Kashveti is the stone church of St George on Rustaveli Avenue, opposite the Parliament building and a few minutes' walk from Freedom Square. It looks medieval, but it was built between 1904 and 1910 to a design by the German architect Leopold Bielfeld, who modelled it on the 11th-century cathedral of Samtavisi in Shida Kartli. The carved facades, the large cross on the east wall and the tall drum of the dome all borrow from that Golden Age style, so Kashveti makes a good first lesson in Georgian church architecture without leaving the city.

Inside, look up at the murals painted in 1947 by Lado Gudiashvili, one of Georgia's leading modernist painters. Decorating a church in the Stalin years cost him dearly: he was expelled from the Communist Party and lost his teaching post. Kashveti is an active and busy parish church, with frequent weddings and baptisms at weekends. The National Gallery, with its rooms of Pirosmani paintings, stands right next door.

The name joins the Georgian words kva, stone, and shva, to give birth. Legend says that in the 6th century St David Garejeli, the hermit of Mtatsminda, was falsely accused by a woman of fathering her child, and he declared that if the charge was untrue she would give birth to a stone, which she did. Earlier churches stood on the site before the present building, which was completed in 1910. Gudiashvili's murals were added in 1947, at a time when religious art was officially frowned upon.