# Dranda Cathedral
- URL: https://explore-georgia.ge/en/places/dranda-cathedral
- Type: place to visit
- Region: Abkhazia
- Coordinates: 42.874167, 41.162222

The cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God at Dranda stands in the village of Dranda, in Gulripshi Municipality, on a raised plateau on the right bank of the Kodori, 23 kilometres south-east of Sukhumi. In the judgement of the archaeologist Liudmila Khrushkova it is, in size, style and state of preservation, unique on the eastern Black Sea coast and perhaps in the whole South Caucasus.

In plan the church combines a rotunda with a cross, set within a rectangle of 27.3 by 19.5 metres; on the east are three faceted apses, the central one five-sided outside and the lateral ones three-sided, linked by small arches, on the west a narthex, and in the western corners two round rooms covered by low domes. The low, broad sixteen-sided dome has no drum and rests directly on the rounded walls of the rotunda and the vaults of the cross arms, an early Byzantine device akin to Hagia Sophia and Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople; sixteen large windows at the base of the dome fill the interior with daylight. The west wall has two side entrances and no central one, a feature that has yet to be convincingly explained in either Byzantine or Caucasian architecture.

The cathedral is built chiefly of brick, unusual for the early medieval Caucasus; the façades are smooth and without ornament. The space between the base of the dome and its blind shell was filled with about thirty whole amphorae of the fourth to seventh centuries. In 1981 a cross-shaped baptismal font (1.12 by 1.13 metres) was found in the narthex, evidence of the early Christian rite of baptism and chrismation.

## History

The sources are silent on the building of the cathedral, and its dating is disputed. Procopius of Caesarea records that in 551 Emperor Justinian I built a church in these parts, which some scholars identify with Dranda; Giorgi Chubinashvili dated the monument to the eighth century and linked it with the Georgian churches of the Jvari type, Rusudan Mepisashvili to the end of the eighth century, while Khotelashvili and Yakobson, on the strength of pottery of the fifth and sixth centuries, held it to be a Byzantine building of the sixth; archaeomagnetic analysis gave the eighth century (±50 years). From the second half of the tenth century to the second half of the seventeenth Dranda was an episcopal see whose bishop was styled "Drandeli"; by Vakhushti's account his diocese stretched between the Kodori and the Psyrtskha. The interior was painted in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

In June 1630 the Italian missionary Giovanni da Lucca visited the cathedral, and on 18 May 1637 an Ottoman landing party sacked it; in 1640 Russian envoys saw here icons and crosses holding relics of St Barbara. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the cathedral stood abandoned. In 1860 Dimitri Bakradze still saw frescoes, which were later lost. In 1880 a monastery was founded at the cathedral; at the beginning of the twentieth century the building was remodelled, an "onion" head of the kind found in Russian wooden architecture being set on the dome, the windows enlarged, the walls whitewashed inside and out and a bell tower added; from the west wall a tunnel 260–280 metres long ran down to the Kodori, in which marble slabs with a relief of the Saviour were found at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1906 Bishop Kirion discovered Georgian manuscripts in the monastery library.

In 1924 the monastery was closed; a prison was set up in its buildings and still operates, while part housed the district administration and a boarding school. On 10 February 2011 the de facto authorities handed the cathedral to a church body not recognised by the Georgian Orthodox Church; afterwards the remains of the rare baptistery of the sixth to seventh centuries were destroyed and a concrete font built in its place.

## Visit info

Dranda lies on the Sukhumi–Ochamchire road, 23 kilometres from the city; the cathedral stands on the plateau at the edge of the village. The church is in use; beside it are the buildings of the former monastery, part of which the prison occupies.

Abkhazia is an occupied territory. Under Georgian law entry to the region is lawful only through the Enguri crossing; entry from Russia is a breach of Georgian law. Check the current conditions of movement before travelling.

## Tips

Go inside around midday, when the sixteen windows at the base of the dome light the interior best; on the walls of the narthex look for the patches of old brickwork left free of plaster. The east façade with its three apses is the most striking. The cathedral makes a one-day route with Mokvi and Ilori.

## Safety

A working prison adjoins the precinct: do not take out a camera near its fences and guard posts. Dress rules are observed in the working church. Consular assistance in the occupied territory is limited.

## Sources

- [Dranda Cathedral — Georgian Wikipedia](https://ka.wikipedia.org/wiki/დრანდის_ტაძარი)
- [Dranda Cathedral — English Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dranda_Cathedral)
- [Dranda Cathedral — Russian Wikipedia](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Драндский_собор)
- [Dranda Cathedral — Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2646612)

## This page in other languages

- [ქართული](https://explore-georgia.ge/ka/adgilebi/drandis-tadzari)
- [Русский](https://explore-georgia.ge/ru/mesta/drandskii-sobor)