According to the Roman historian Procopius of Caesarea, in 551 emperor Justinian I built a temple in these environs; this is believed by some to have been what is now the cathedral in Dranda.

Russian and Georgian historian, archaeologist and ethnographer Dmitry Bakradze, visiting the Dranda Cathedral in 1860, reported that the temple was painted with frescoes.

In 1880, a monastery was established at the cathedral[3] After the Red Army invasion of Georgia in 1921, the Georgian Orthodox Church was subjected to intense harassment.

A prison was opened in the monastic buildings, which is still functioning today, and the administration of Gulrifshi district and a boarding school were placed in a part of it.

The result of this was the loss of some original elements of ancient architecture, including the destruction of the remains of one of the few surviving baptismal churches of the 6th-7th centuries, on the site of which a new concrete font was built.