Bagrati Cathedral crowns a hill above Kutaisi, in western Georgia, where it has been a landmark of the city and a symbol of the medieval kingdom that built it. Constructed under King Bagrat III at the turn of the eleventh century, it belonged to a moment when a unified Georgian state was asserting itself in architecture as much as in politics. Its dome and much of its structure were destroyed by an explosion during Ottoman military operations in the seventeenth century, and for some three hundred years the cathedral stood as a monumental ruin, open to the sky. That silhouette became part of the national imagination. The reconstruction carried out in recent decades restored the building to use and provoked a long international debate about authenticity, reversibility and the rights of a living community over an inherited monument. The film sets the architecture of the interior against panoramic views of Kutaisi, and treats the cathedral as both a place of worship and an unusually clear illustration of what restoration means.
