[1] The Tsilkani cathedral stands in the centre of the eponymous village—northwest of the ancient city of Mtskheta—on the left bank of the Narekvavi, a tributary of the Aragvi River.

The village, home to a Late Bronze Age burial mound and other archaeological finds, is also notable for a 4th–5th-century Christian crypt, with a Greek inscription on its wall.

The church was also associated in medieval Georgian tradition—elaborated in the hymns by the 13th-century cleric Arsen Bulmaisimisdze—with the monk Jesse from Antioch who came as part of the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers in Kartli around 545.

The icon was repainted and refurbished at the turn of the 12th century, but the faces painted in encaustic tempera were left untouched.

[3] The extant church, measuring 28 × 24 m and built largely of dressed sandstone blocks, is a cross-in-square building, with a semicircular apse and a central dome held up on four free-standing piers.