This is the Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi, a cavernous building that was constructed between 1995 and 2004, designed by the architect Archil Mindiashvili.
It’s certainly an impressive structure, but there is an element of it perhaps feeling just a little ostentatious.
It’s one of the largest new cathedrals in Europe, sitting on top of a hill which makes it easy to see throughout Tbilisi. It’s the main cathedral building of the Georgian Orthodox Church and they clearly decided that they wanted something quite fancy. It’s all been constructed on Elia Hill (also known as St. Elijah Hill), with some controversy about how much was knocked down to build this.
This repair scaffold gives an indication of the height of the structure. There were numerous things to look at in terms of icons, but these were only described in Georgian, which isn’t unreasonable, although they’d translated the donations box into English.
I must admit, I did find myself questioning just how much money was spent on this and how many donated that perhaps didn’t have much. One of the largest donors to the project was the politician Bidzina Ivanishvili, which does make matters a little more complex in some ways.
It’s 86 metres in height from the bottom of the structure to the top of the tower, which is ten metres shorter than Norwich Cathedral, which is how I tend to compare heights of structures.
One of the lower floors, there’s no shortage of space here.
They managed to build the cathedral but seemed to forget any public toilets. There were some free facilities around a three minute walk away, but they were in pretty terrible condition. It’s all really rather lovely, but there’s a whole question about how much this has cost and where it has come from. It’s not for me to answer that, but it’s hard not to think about it.