# Ikorta Church
- URL: https://explore-georgia.ge/en/places/ikorta-church
- Type: place to visit
- Region: Shida Kartli
- Coordinates: 42.166389, 44.155833

Ikorta Church stands on a mountain slope at the edge of the village of Ikorta, in Eredvi municipality in Shida Kartli. It was originally part of the Ikorta castle, of which only the citadel and the church remain. In the seventeenth century the eristavis of Ksani surrounded the monastery with a wall and turned it into a fortress.

The church is a cross-in-square domed building, rectangular in plan, with a semicircular apse on the east; apart from the apse arm, the other three arms are rectangular. The dome rests on the corners of the sanctuary and on two free-standing pillars, hexagonal or, by other accounts, octagonal, with bases and capitals, and the arches resting on them are stepped. The four side rooms next to the apse have two storeys: the lower ones are the pastophoria, open to the main space through arches, and the upper ones are hiding places; this creates an impression of a single unified space and is a special feature of Ikorta. The western arm is joined to the side naves by two arches; the upper floors of the side naves were meant for the nobility, women and the choir. The church is well lit by 12 windows in the tall drum and 5 windows in the side walls. The walls and vaults were plastered and painted at the time of building; fragments of the original murals survive in the apse, on the north wall and at the base of the drum. The original porches at the south and west entrances are ruined, and the present south porch is much later.

The façades and the drum are lavishly carved and stand out for the high skill of their execution. The stepped arcading of paired rolls follows an eleventh-century tradition. The centre of the east façade is a composition of a cross, a rosette, a framed window and two rhombs between two deep niches with carved tops; it is flanked on each side by a vertical row of a round window, a rosette and an arched window. The west façade has two large windows, each under its own arch, with a rosette above; the south and north façades each have a high central arch with three windows and two lower arches on each side. Each window of the drum has its carved frame and arch. On the west wall is a sundial, and asomtavruli inscriptions on the west and east walls tell of the year of building and the names of the builders. The sundial has a semicircle with 12 sectors marked with letters for the hours and a hole for a stick, whose shadow showed the time. In all, 10 sundials of this type have been found in Georgia.

## History

According to an inscription on its wall, the church was built in 1172, in the reign of King Giorgi III; it was commissioned by the family of the eristavis of Ksani. Ikorta is one of the Georgian churches of the eleventh–thirteenth centuries that set the final canonical model of the Georgian domed cross-in-square church, and among the domed churches of Kartli from the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it is the earliest, both in date and in its artistic and stylistic features. In the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries a monastery was founded here, and the church became the burial place of the eristavis of Ksani. In the seventeenth century the church was renovated, while its original design was largely preserved. Buried here are the leaders of the Kakheti uprising of 1659, the brothers Shalva and Elizbar, eristavis of Ksani, and their companion Bidzina Cholokashvili, who were tortured to death for rising against Persian rule in Kakheti and were later canonised by the Georgian Orthodox Church.

In the eighteenth century the fortress was attacked several times by Turks and Lezgins. In 1811 the church and the monastery were closed; at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth the monastery reopened and was repaired, and in Soviet times the church was closed again. In the Racha earthquake of 1991 a large part of the dome collapsed and the church was badly damaged. In 1999 the World Monuments Fund put it on its list of the 100 most endangered sites, and in 1999–2003 the church was restored under the architect M. Bochoidze. On 7 November 2006 a decree of the President of Georgia granted it the status of an immovable cultural monument of national significance. The church was damaged during the war of August 2008.

## Visit info

The church stands on a mountain slope at the edge of the village of Ikorta. Check the way there and the conditions on site in advance.

Eredvi municipality is an occupied territory. Under Georgian law, entry to the Tskhinvali region is lawful only from the direction of Gori municipality; entry from Russia is a breach of Georgian law. Check the current conditions of movement before travelling.

## Tips

On the east façade look at the composition of the cross, rosette, window and rhombs, and on the west wall at the sundial with its 12 lettered sectors. Inside, look for the fragments of the original painting in the apse, on the north wall and at the base of the drum.

## Safety

The church was damaged in the earthquake of 1991 and in the war of 2008: check the condition of the building before going in. Consular assistance in the occupied territory is limited.

## Sources

- [Ikorta Church — Georgian Wikipedia](https://ka.wikipedia.org/wiki/იკორთის_ტაძარი)
- [Ikorta Church — English Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikorta_church)
- [Ikorta — Russian Wikipedia](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Икорта_%28церковь%29)
- [Law of Georgia on Occupied Territories — matsne.gov.ge](https://matsne.gov.ge/en/document/view/19132)
- [Ikorta Church — Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1534278)

## This page in other languages

- [ქართული](https://explore-georgia.ge/ka/adgilebi/ikortis-tadzari)
- [Русский](https://explore-georgia.ge/ru/mesta/cerkov-ikorta)