Jvari is a rare case of an Early Medieval Georgian church that has survived to the present day almost unchanged.

Along with other historic structures of Mtskheta, the monastery was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1994.

[1] Jvari Monastery stands on the rocky mountaintop at the confluence of the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers, overlooking the town of Mtskheta, which was formerly the capital of the Kingdom of Iberia.

According to traditional accounts, on this location in the early 4th century Saint Nino, a female evangelist credited with converting King Mirian III of Iberia to Christianity, erected a large wooden (or vine) cross on the site of a pagan temple.

In 914, during the Sajid invasion of Georgia, the church was burned by Arabs, but it managed to survive with only minor repairments.

In the late Middle Ages, the complex was fortified by a stone wall and gate, remnants of which still survive.

During the Soviet period, the church was preserved as a national monument, but access was rendered difficult by tight security at a nearby military base.

The building has the shape of a cross, prolonged from east to west, with each arm ended by semicircular apses.

Varied bas-relief sculptures with Hellenistic and Sassanian influences decorate its external observable eastern and southern façades, some of which are accompanied by explanatory inscriptions in Georgian Asomtavruli script.

Northern façade is closed by a small earlier built church, as well as the western, visible from afar, are not decorated.

Uncertainty over, and debate about, the date of the church's construction have assumed nationalist undertones in Georgia and Armenia.

Each nation claims to have invented the "four-apsed church with four niches" form exhibited by Jvari.