Places
Svetitskhoveli Cathedral’s stone walls and conical-roofed dome inside its enclosure.
The cathedral at Mtskheta. Photo: Supanut Arunoprayote, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Place · Cathedral

Svetitskhoveli Cathedral

Eleventh-century cathedral at Mtskheta, long one of the principal churches of Georgia and the burial place of its kings.

Location
Mtskheta, Georgia
Building
Cathedral (Georgian Orthodox)
Tradition
Georgian Orthodox
Religious use
In use as a cathedral of the Georgian Orthodox Church.
Official website
No official website is recorded for this place in Wikidata, and none was confirmed.

Map Building location: Apple Maps · Google Maps — the building, not a confirmed visitor entrance.

Svetitskhoveli is among the most venerated places of worship in the region and one of the four Great Cathedrals of the Georgian Orthodox world. It is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In the Atlas

Each paragraph says whether it is documented history, a tradition handed down, or disputed.

  • Tradition

    Georgian tradition holds that Christ’s robe, brought from Jerusalem by a Georgian Jew named Elias, is buried on the site, and that St Nino chose it for the first Georgian church.

  • Documented

    The first church was built in the fourth century under King Mirian III. The present cross-in-square building was completed between 1010 and 1029 by the architect Arsukisdze.

Reference draft. The statements were checked against the general reference sources below, read in a build session (Wikipedia at a recorded revision, and Wikidata). They have not yet been checked against scholarly or primary sources.

  • Reference work · Read in a build session

    Svetitskhoveli Cathedral — Wikipedia (English)

    Read on 28 Oct 2026 at revision 1369982180, fetched by the research workflow (research/fetched/places/svetitskhoveli-cathedral/wikipedia.txt). A general reference work, not a scholarly source; the statements here were checked against it.

  • Reference work · Read in a build session

    Wikidata item Q1152972 (Svetitskhoveli Cathedral) — Wikidata

    Read on 28 Oct 2026: instance of, religion, diocese, coordinates and official website.