Davit Gareja is one of the strangest and most fascinating places in Georgia: a cluster of rock-cut monasteries scattered across the slopes of a ridge of semi-desert hills, at the end of the world in the country's south-east, right on the border with Azerbaijan. There are no forests, rivers or villages here: just arid steppe, bare hills that change colour with the light, an immense silence and, carved into the stone over almost fifteen hundred years, hundreds of cells, chapels and churches where generations of monks sought God in the desert.
The complex began in the 6th century, when St David, one of the so-called Thirteen Assyrian Fathers who spread monasticism in Georgia, withdrew to this wilderness to live as a hermit. Over the centuries, one of the country's great spiritual and cultural centres grew up around him, with several monasteries, thousands of caves and medieval frescoes that rank among the treasures of Georgian art. It enjoyed a period of splendour during the kingdom's golden age, suffered terrible massacres and plundering, and even survived Soviet atheism.
This guide helps you visit it practically and with a clear head: how to get there from Tbilisi (the Gareji Line minibus, tours, by car), what to see at the Lavra of St David and in the painted caves of Udabno, what the landscape of the Gareja desert and its colourful hills is like, and what you need to know about the delicate border dispute with Azerbaijan that sometimes limits access to the upper section. It is an excursion unlike any other, a mix of art, history, spirituality and rugged nature that leaves a mark that is hard to forget.
Davit Gareja was founded in the 6th century by St David of Gareja, one of the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers who, according to tradition, came to Georgia to consolidate Christianity and monastic life. David and his disciples, such as Dodo and Lukiane, withdrew to this semi-desert and dug the first cells and chapels into the rock, giving rise to the Lavra that bears his name and to the neighbouring monasteries. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, during the golden age of the Kingdom of Georgia and the reign of Queen Tamar, the complex reached its peak: new monasteries such as Udabno and Bertubani were built, and their churches were covered with outstanding frescoes, true gems of medieval Georgian art, including portraits of kings and of Tamar herself. Then came destruction: the Mongol invasion of 1265 and, above all, the massacre ordered by the Persian Shah Abbas I in 1615, in which thousands of monks are said to have been killed during Easter, the worst catastrophe in its history. The monastery declined, was revived and then closed in Soviet times, and today it is once again an active spiritual centre, as well as a site disputed between Georgia and Azerbaijan because of its border location. That story of hermits, splendour, massacres and rebirths is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Georgia's wine country in the east: the Alazani Valley and its ancient vineyards, the hilltop town of Sighnaghi, the Telavi wine route and the rock-cut monasteries of Davit Gareja.
Read the history of Kakheti: the land of wine →They depart from Tbilisi, 55 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The story of Davit Gareja begins in the 6th century, deep in the semi-desert of south-eastern Georgia, with a man in search of solitude. That man was David, one of the so-called 'Thirteen Assyrian Fathers', a group of monks who, according to Georgian tradition, came from the East (from the region of Mesopotamia and Syria) to strengthen Christianity and spread monastic life in the kingdom of Kartli (Caucasian Iberia), which had adopted the Christian faith only two centuries earlier. Each of these fathers settled in a different part of Georgia and founded centres that would become fundamental to the country's Church.
David had already lived as an ascetic on the outskirts of Tbilisi, where he is associated with Mount Mtatsminda, the 'holy mountain' that dominates the capital today. With his disciples, among them Lukiane and Dodo, he withdrew even further, to the arid hills of Gareja. It was a place with no water, no trees and no people: exactly the kind of desert the early Christian monks sought so they could draw closer to God without distractions, following the example of the Desert Fathers of Egypt and Palestine. There, in the stone of the hillsides, they began to carve out cells and chapels.
That first hermit community gave rise to the Lavra of Saint David, the original monastery. Following David's example, other disciples soon founded neighbouring monasteries, such as the Monastery of the Virgin (Dodos Rka, linked to Dodo) and the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist (Natlismtsemeli). What began as a hermit's refuge grew over the centuries into one of the largest monastic complexes in the whole Caucasus: a network of monasteries that eventually held thousands of rock-cut cells, spread across more than twenty kilometres of these border hills. The desert David chose for its solitude ended up as one of the places in Georgia most filled with prayer.
Davit Gareja reached its height between the late 11th and early 13th centuries. This was also the golden age of the Kingdom of Georgia, when the country was at its most powerful, its largest and its richest in culture, under rulers such as David IV the Builder and, above all, Queen Tamar. During those centuries the monastic complex grew enormously: the old monasteries were enlarged and reorganised, and new ones were founded, such as Udabno, Bertubani and Chichkhituri. Davit Gareja became a leading centre not only of spiritual life but also of learning and art, with schools for copying manuscripts, theology and painting.
The jewel of that period is the frescoes. The rock-cut churches and refectories were covered in murals of outstanding quality, now considered part of the treasury of medieval Christian art. Alongside the usual religious scenes (the life of Christ, the saints, the Last Judgement), these paintings include something especially valuable for Georgian history: portraits of real rulers. The walls of these monasteries show David the Builder (at Natlismtsemeli), Demetrius the Self-Sacrificer (at Udabno) and Queen Tamar herself (at Bertubani). This makes Davit Gareja a unique visual record of how power looked and presented itself in medieval Georgia.
That prosperity was no accident. It mirrored the prosperity of the whole kingdom. While Georgia was a regional power, its monasteries received protection, donations and talent, and Davit Gareja, despite sitting on the edge of the desert, shone as one of the great beacons of Christian civilisation in the Caucasus. The frescoes that still amaze travellers in the caves of Udabno, when they can be reached, bear direct witness to that bright moment when the hermits' desert filled with art and kings.
In misfortune too, Davit Gareja's fate followed that of the Kingdom of Georgia. When invasions brought the golden age to an end, the monastery paid a terrible price. The first great disaster came with the Mongols: in 1265, Ilkhanate troops ravaged the region and badly damaged the complex, beginning a long period of decline. Over the following centuries, the area found itself again and again in the line of fire between the empires fighting over the Caucasus, especially Persia and the Ottoman Empire.
The worst tragedy, however, has a date and a name. In 1615, during his brutal campaigns against Georgia, the Persian ruler Shah Abbas I ordered an attack on the monastery. According to tradition, the massacre took place on Easter night. Thousands of monks are said to have been killed while celebrating the Resurrection; the figure that has survived in memory is around six thousand. It was a slaughter worse even than the Mongol devastation, and it very nearly ended monastic life at Gareja for good. The Georgian Church remembers these martyred monks as one of the darkest episodes in its history of martyrdom.
After such a blow, Davit Gareja never fully regained its former splendour. Monastic life partly revived in later centuries, and the site remained a place of pilgrimage and devotion. The monastery held on, badly wounded, just as Georgia itself held on through centuries of invasions. Its survival was made of ruins, the memory of martyrs and a stubborn faith, in a corner of the country where the desert seemed determined to swallow everything people built.
The 20th century brought Davit Gareja more difficult chapters. Under Soviet rule, which was hostile to religion, the monastery was closed and its community scattered. The life of prayer that had outlasted Mongols and Persians was cut short by the state's atheist ideology. Worse still, for decades the Soviet army used the Gareja semi-desert as a firing range and training ground, damaging buildings and frescoes and putting the heritage at risk. In the 1980s, towards the end of the Soviet era, Georgian intellectuals and students protested to demand an end to military exercises at such a sacred site. Those protests were also an early way of asserting Georgian identity against Moscow.
When Georgia became independent in 1991, the monastery came back to life. The Georgian Orthodox Church took it back, monks returned to the Lavra of Saint David, and the site reopened for worship and, little by little, for tourism. But the fall of the Soviet Union also created a new and thorny problem: the border. When the USSR broke up, the line between the republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan was drawn so that part of the Davit Gareja complex fell right on the dividing line, and both countries claim it. This applies in particular to the ridge where Udabno and its frescoes stand.
The dispute simmered for years and flared up in 2019, when access to the upper area was restricted. There were tense moments with Azerbaijani border guards, and some incidents reached the press and the diplomats of both countries. Georgia considers the monastery an essential part of its historical and spiritual heritage. Azerbaijan claims the territory and links it to its own history as a former place of worship of Caucasian Albania. It is a real, sensitive dispute that is still unresolved, and it is worth looking at with respect and without oversimplifying: two neighbouring countries that generally get on well, with one specific disagreement over a few kilometres of ridge that carry great symbolic weight. For travellers, this means that access to Udabno may be open or closed depending on the moment. Check before you go and follow the authorities' instructions. Politics aside, Davit Gareja remains what it has been since the 6th century: a place of silence and stone in the desert, where fifteen centuries of history (hermits, kings, martyrs and borders) are carved into the rock.
