The ruins of the church of the Dark Gorge lie about three kilometres northeast of the Pitareti monastery, on the crest of a wooded ridge. The place has neither a name nor a history: there is no record of the monastery in historical sources or in scholarly literature, and local people do not know a name for it either.
The monastery is badly ruined, architectural details and fragments of old stelae are scattered around, and most of the buildings are buried in earth. Specialists take the earliest building to be a hall church of the 8th and 9th centuries, about eight and a half metres by five, laid of rubble. Its main architectural mark is the semicircular apse.
Ornamented fragments of stone crosses of the 6th century are set into the walls of the church, and one of them carries a relief of a niamori, the bezoar goat of the local mountains. Flat slabs, probably former gravestones, are set in beside them, and equal armed crosses are carved across the walls.
💡 Tip
- A place without a name: no record of the monastery anywhere
- A relief of a niamori, the bezoar goat, on a stone cross
- Fragments of 6th century crosses are set into the walls
🚗 Getting there
- Pitareti, Tetritskaro Municipality, Kvemo Kartli
- The Build Route button will take you to the spot
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