Chulevi Monastery

The Chulevi monastery of St. George is a 14th-century Georgian Orthodox monastic church located in Georgia's southwest region of Samtskhe-Javakheti. The Chulevi monastery sits on the left bank of the Kvabliani river, near the town of Adigeni in the historic province of Samtskhe. The monastery is alternatively known as Chule or Chulebi. The site was home to a monastic community already in the 11th century, but it was in the latter part of the 14th century that the current edifice was constructed to become a major religious and cultural center in south Georgia. An inscription in the medieval Georgian asomtavruli script reveals the name of the artist Arsen who frescoed the interior of Chulevi in 1381. The murals depict, inter alia, a group portrait of the local princely house of Jaqeli, patrons of the monastery. The Chulevi monastery shares a series of common features with the contemporary and nearby located churches of Zarzma and Sapara such as the typically elongated overall plan and the interior space, rectangular shape with no projections, a dome resting upon the walls of the altar and two cross-shaped pillars, the dome tholobate containing twelve windows with half of them false. At the same time, Chulevi is an example of decline in Georgian architecture and monumental painting due to two hundred years of Mongol dominance. After th

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