Aghaiani church of Saint Nino
აღაიანის ნინოწმინდის ეკლესია | |
41°56′33″N 44°27′26″E / 41.942409°N 44.457348°E | |
Location | Aghaiani, Kaspi Municipality Shida Kartli, Georgia |
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Type | Hall church |
Aghaiani church of Saint Nino (
Location
The Aghaiani church tops Mount Tkhoti, 845 m high, on the left bank of the
Layout
The extant edifice, built of stone and brick, measures 8.48 × 4.18 m. It was originally a cross-in-square structure built in the 7th or 8th century. In the 9th or 10th century, the church was remodeled into a hall church: its cross-like appearance was retained as were a semi-circular apse and the western arm, but the dome was replaced with a barrel vault rested on five arches and the northern and southern arms were built up. The entrances are on the north and west. The interior is lit with two windows, one in the apse and the other in the southern wall. The central bay is covered with a gable, while the northern and southern projections have pent roofs. An arched buttress was annexed to the southern façade in the 16th century.[4] The church was repaired in 2007.
The sanctuary walls bear surviving fragments of frescoes and inscriptions. The paintings are stylistically dated to the end of the 10th or the beginning of the 11th century. On the eastern façade, a keystone of window arch bears three sculpted crosses. The southern façade boasts an inscription in the medieval Georgian
References
- ^ "List of Immovable Cultural Monuments" (PDF) (in Georgian). National Agency for Cultural Heritage Preservation of Georgia. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
- ^ Skhirtladze, Zaza (1999). "Under the Sign of the Triumph of Holy Cross: Telovani Church Original Decoration and Its Iconographic Programme". Cahiers archéologiques. 47: 101–118.
- ISBN 0-7007-0633-X.
- ^ a b Dolidze, V; Kintsurashvili, S; Sidamonidze, U; Tskitishvili, G, eds. (1990). საქართველოს ისტორიისა და კულტურის ძეგლთა აღწერილობა, ტ. 5 [Historical and cultural monuments of Georgia: Summa, vol. 5] (in Georgian). Tbilisi: Metsniereba. pp. 136–140.