Gelati Monastery

Gelati Monastery crowns a hill above the Tskaltsitela Gorge near Kutaisi, seat of the medieval Georgian kings in Imereti. King David IV the Builder founded it in 1106 as both a monastery and an academy. Its main Church of the Blessed Virgin was completed in 1130 under his successor Demetrius I, who placed the gates carried off from Ganja in 1138 at its entrance. David himself was buried there.

The Gelati Academy gathered theologians and philosophers who had studied at houses such as the Mangana in Constantinople. Ioane Petritsi wrote commentaries on Proclus, Arsen Ikaltoeli compiled the Aristotle-influenced Dogmatikon, and scribes copied manuscripts, so that contemporaries called the house a new Hellas and a second Athos.