Monastery · Ikalto, Telavi Municipality, Kakheti
Ikalto Monastery
იყალთოს მონასტერი · Ikalto Monastery Complex
A monastery in Ikalto, a short drive from Telavi, founded in the sixth century by Zenon, one of the Syrian fathers, and home to a medieval academy until Shah Abbas I's army burned it in 1616.
Where it is
41.9373, 45.3808
Why go
The churches span several centuries: the Trinity Church dates from the sixth, the Church of the Transfiguration from the eighth to ninth, and All Saints from the twelfth to thirteenth. The academy building goes back to the eighth or ninth century, and in the eleventh and twelfth the scholar Arsen Ikaltoeli shaped it into a school of theology, rhetoric, astronomy, philosophy, geography, geometry, hymn singing, metalworking, ceramics and viticulture; tradition holds that Shota Rustaveli studied here. The wine-making side survives in a large stone wine press and the traces of a cellar. Services resumed in 1991, so it is a working monastery as well as a historic site, 12 km from Telavi.
Near Ikalto Monastery
Historic site
Batonistsikhe
The walled residence of the Kakhetian kings in Telavi, with a royal palace, court churches and a royal bath enclosed by a five-metre battlemented wall.
8 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Fortress
Bochorma Fortress
A mountain fortress in Tianeti municipality whose walls and towers follow the terrain around a tenth-century church of St George, once the key to controlling Kakheti.
19 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Fortress
Ujarma Fortress
A fortress town on a rocky ridge above the right bank of the Iori near the Gombori Pass, founded under King Aspagur and made a royal residence by Vakhtang Gorgasali in the fifth century.
23 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ
Church
Kvetera Church
A small tenth-century domed church with four apses, standing on a hilltop inside the abandoned fortress town of Kvetera on the right bank of the Ilto near Akhmeta.
27 km · straight-line distance; driving distance and time differ