Anchiskhati Basilica
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The Anchiskhati Basilica of St Mary is the oldest surviving church in Tbilisi, Georgia. It dates from the sixth century and has largely preserved its original architecture.
According to the old Georgian annals, the church was built by the king Dachi of Iberia (circa 522-534) who had made Tbilisi his capital. The name Anchiskhati (i.e., icon of Anchi) comes from the treasured icon of Savior created by the twelfth-century goldsmith Beka Opizari at the Anchi Monastery in Klarjeti, what is now northeast Turkey.
The icon was moved in Tbilisi in 1664 so as not to be destroyed by the Ottoman invasion, and was preserved at St Mary’s church for centuries (it is presently on display in the Georgian National Museum of Fine Arts).
There is a brick belfry near the Anchiskhati Church that was build by the catholicos Domenti in 1675. The look of the church was drastically changed in the 1870s. From 1958 to 1964 restoration works took place, which changed the view of the church back to the seventeenth-century version.
