Atsquri was one of the most important Christian centers in medieval Georgia, the seat of a bishop—a chief prelate in the province of Samtskhe—and home to the venerated icon of the Virgin Hodegetria.

The icon, according to the medieval Georgian annals, was brought here by Saint Andrew, visited by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius on his way to the Persian war in 627, and miraculously survived under the collapsed dome of the church in the 1283 earthquake.

In the late 16th century, the icon eventually found its place in the Gelati monastery, whence it was brought to the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi in 1952.

[5] In the final years of the Soviet Union, in the 1980s, an interest in the Christian heritage of Atsquri was resurrected, driven by volunteer student groups.

A series of archaeological studies were conducted in the following years and a full-scale restoration project, aimed at complete rebuilding of the church was launched by the government of Georgia in 2016.