Chiatura and katskhi Pillar
9/27/2025
Chiatura was a mining town during the Soviet era and is known for its extensive, Soviet-era cable car system that connected the city's valley to the surrounding hills. There were once about 20 of these cable cars and they were used as regular transportation to get up to the school, hospital, and apartments for miners. There are only about 4 left. We rode one up to an abandoned apartment complex. The cable car went almost straight up. It was pretty cool.
We walked up A LOT of stairs to the 13th century Mghvimevi Monastery. There is a church, and several small stone buildings, and the nun’s monastery (which you can not visit). Like all good religious sights there were some skulls. These particular skulls were from nuns that made significant contributions to the running of the monastery. Of course, my clever husband couldn’t stop giggling and saying “nun-skulls… you get it!” (you can’t take him anywhere!)
We checked out some other abandoned junk (railway station, hospital, and cable cars).
Our final stop was the Katskhi Pillar, a unique natural limestone monolith 40 meters (131 feet) tall. It has been a place of worship for centuries, believed to have been used as a pagan temple as early as the 6th century, and later converted into a Christian church. Today, it is an active Christian monastery, with a small church and living quarters for monks. This thing was really cool! Obviously, we couldn’t go up to the top (the ladder didn’t look like anything I wanted to climb anyhow), but there was a small church and museum at the base.
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