Dynastic History | Bagrati Cathedral, Kutaisi — The Floor Was Laid in Koronikoni 223

An inscription on the north wall of the cathedral at Kutaisi records that the floor was laid when the koronikoni stood at 223. Georgian dating ran on a 532-year paschal cycle, and that number converts to 1003. A second inscription, cut above the central windows of the east facade between 1001 and 1003, names the patron: Bagrat III, king from 978 to 1014, and his mother. The inscriptions give the king, his mother and the year. They do not give the men who quarried the stone.

In 1692 Ottoman troops looted the cathedral and brought it under cannon fire, and the dome, the drum and the vaults came down. It took further damage in 1770 during a Russian occupation. Then it stood as a roofless shell for three centuries, which is the shape nineteenth-century travellers drew and photographed.

Conservation began in 1952 under Vakhtang Tsintsadze, a reconstruction fund followed in 1994, and the major works — the Italian architect Andrea Bruno among those involved — were finished in 2012: new walls, new dome, new roof. On 10 July 2017 the World Heritage Committee approved a boundary change that took Bagrati out of the World Heritage property altogether and left Gelati on the list alone. The cathedral, UNESCO stated, "has undergone major reconstruction detrimental to its integrity and authenticity".

So the building is whole and the listing is gone. It stands on the Ukimerioni hill above Kutaisi, in use again, with the older ruined masonry still visible along its flank where the new stone stops.

📸 Cover: Bagrati Cathedral in February 2026, after the reconstruction, David1010, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons