# Likhauri Church
- URL: https://explore-georgia.ge/en/places/likhauri-church
- Type: place to visit
- Region: Guria
- Coordinates: 41.883333, 42.011667

The church of the Mother of God at Likhauri stands on a raised hill in the centre of the village in Ozurgeti Municipality, surrounded by the village cemetery; the complex of church, bell tower and wall is an immovable cultural monument of national significance. The church is a hall building of dressed greyish ashlar, square in plan with a five-sided apse projecting on the east, standing on a two-stepped plinth; each of three faces of the apse carries a carefully carved arched window, the entrances are on the west and south, the western porch opened by a twin arch is a later addition, the windows have ornamented surrounds framed by mouldings, and the church ends in a shelf-like cornice under a gabled tiled roof. Art historians date the church to the second half of the thirteenth century by the marks of that age: the compositional completeness of the façades breaks down and the ornament is sharply geometrised; the southern façade collapsed and was rebuilt in stone and brick, its late medieval windows are identical to those of the Jumati church, and both were probably renewed by the same master under Giorgi IV Gurieli and Queen Khvaramze. The church was wholly painted with frescoes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, among them portraits of four laymen, but in the first half of the 1990s they were scraped off on the pretext of renewing the painting and the church was repainted; the badly damaged remains are at the Tbilisi Academy of Arts with cultural heritage status, and on the spot only the scenes of the Deposition and the Opening of the Tomb survive.

West of the church stands the two-storey bell tower built in 1422 of the same hard pale grey stone: the ground floor is a porch opened by an arch on the east-west axis, with a stair to the upper floor set in its wall, and the upper floor is an eight-arched pavilion under a dome-like wooden roof on four sharp stone columns, beneath which hang two bells, one of them old cast iron, without tongue or inscription. The ground-floor façades were carved with bunches of grapes and leaves, now lost, a high relief of a ram's head is set into the façade, and the building inscription in asomtavruli on the western façade dates it to 1422 and preserves the old name of the village, Rekhoeli. The church was protected by a stone wall with a square bell tower, of which only the northern side survives today.

## History

In the view of Ekvtime Takaishvili and Dimitri Bakradze the Likhauri church was built in 1352 under Kakhaber Gurieli, lord of Guria, the date taken from the inscription of an icon of the Virgin naming Kakhaber I Gurieli and the chronicon of 1352; the researcher Gia Chanishvili holds that Marushian Vardanisdze built the church and Kakhaber Gurieli added the stoa, while art historians date the building to the second half of the thirteenth century. The inscriptions of the Likhauri icons are the oldest in Guria: the twelfth-century gold icon of St James names Marushian Vardanisdze and his wife Khatuta of the Samdzivari family, the gold icon of the Saviour is of the eleventh century, and a triptych with the apostles Peter and Paul and the archangels of the twelfth or thirteenth. In 1873 Bakradze described four icons at Likhauri, in 1890 Kondakov seven, and Ermakov's catalogue of 1896 lists a bell with an inscription in mkhedruli and icons of the Saviour, St James, St George and the Virgin; the church kept an eleventh-century Gospel on parchment and a book of hours.

From 1889 to 1932 the last rector of the church was the chanter Nestor Kontridze, who cared for the Likhauri Gospel and had it bound on 21 March 1890; in 1924 the Communists raided the church and stripped it of its valuables, and the Gospel was taken to Tbilisi that year by Akaki Shanidze and Shalva Amiranashvili, the damaged and disbound manuscript now lying in the Q collection of the National Centre of Manuscripts. In 1989 the church and bell tower were restored, in 2010–2011 a reinforced-concrete retaining wall 10 metres high and 23 metres long was built in three terraces on the slipping slope, and in 2010 a branch of the Ozurgeti museum, the Ekvtime Takaishvili Museum, opened in Likhauri.

## Visit info

Likhauri is 6 kilometres east of Ozurgeti, about 10 minutes by car; the church stands on the hill in the centre of the village. The village also has the Ekvtime Takaishvili Museum, a branch of the Ozurgeti History Museum. Check the opening hours of the church and the museum locally.

## Tips

Look for the asomtavruli inscription of 1422 and the ram's head on the western façade of the bell tower, and see the three apse windows in morning light, when the carving reads best. The Likhauri Gospel is kept at the National Centre of Manuscripts. With Shemokmedi and Jumati it makes one day.

## Safety

Dress modestly in the church and do not disturb services. The hill is prone to landslips, so keep away from the edge of the retaining wall, and walk carefully through the cemetery.

## Sources

- [Likhauri church — Georgian Wikipedia](https://ka.wikipedia.org/wiki/ლიხაურის_ეკლესია)
- [Likhauri church — English Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likhauri_church)
- [Likhauri church — Russian Wikipedia](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Церковь_Рождества_Богородицы_%28Лихаури%29)
- [Likhauri Church — Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1426363)

## This page in other languages

- [ქართული](https://explore-georgia.ge/ka/adgilebi/likhauris-eklesia)
- [Русский](https://explore-georgia.ge/ru/mesta/likhaurskaia-cerkov)