Manglisi Cathedral

Manglisi Sioni, the Cathedral of the Dormition, stands in the small hill town of Manglisi, 1,200 metres up on the southern slopes of the Trialeti range. By tradition this is one of the first places in Georgia where a church was built after King Mirian accepted Christianity in the 4th century, when a bishop named John came with relics said to include a piece of the True Cross. The present building began as a 5th-century tetraconch, a church with four apses, unusually enclosed in an octagonal outer shell.

The church was heavily reworked in the early 11th century under King Giorgi I, when it was extended to the east and gained new gates and carved facades; an inscription dates the work to 1020. A 19th-century restoration changed much of the interior and destroyed most of the old murals. It is an active church in a quiet setting, and Manglisi itself, a former spa town among conifer woods, is a good base for Algeti National Park.

Georgian chronicles link the first church at Manglisi to the 4th century, and the bishopric here was one of the oldest in Georgia. A tetraconch church was built in the second half of the 5th century. In 1020, during the reign of Giorgi I, it was substantially extended and redecorated. Bishop Arseni added walls and towers in the 17th century, and the cathedral was restored in 1851–1857, when Manglisi was the base of the Russian Erivan Grenadier Regiment.