Skhalta Cathedral

Skhalta Cathedral, the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin, stands on a hill in the Skhalta river valley in Kinchauri village, south of Khulo. It is the best-known medieval church in Upper Adjara, a region where most people became Muslim during the Ottoman centuries. The building is a large hall church of grey-white stone with a vaulted interior, a seven-sided apse that projects from the east wall, and main doorways on the south and west. Its scale is surprising for such a remote mountain valley.

Inside, fragments of wall paintings of New Testament scenes survive. They were painted in the Palaeologan style of the 14th or 15th century and uncovered in 1997. Monks returned in 1990, and the church is again an active monastery and the seat of the bishop of Skhalta. A walking route links Skhalta with the village of Tago across the gorge from Khulo.

Skhalta was built in the mid-13th century on a medieval route linking Adjara with Artaani, today Ardahan in Turkey. Local legend credits Queen Tamar (1184–1213) with founding it, though the building is probably a little later than her reign. The frescoes were added in the 14th or 15th century. During the Ottoman period most of the local population became Muslim, and the church was consecrated again as a monastery only in 1990.