Alaverdi Resort

A hotel by the Alaverdi monastery

The new hotel in the village of Alaverdi has grown up beside one of Georgia's great churches, the Alaverdi monastery, more than a thousand years old. It was built by the wine company Badagoni and is meant not simply as a place to sleep but as a quiet retreat that carries the spirit of the monastery. As you drive up, the silhouette of the cathedral rises above green hills and vineyards running to the horizon.

The architecture joins modern restraint with Georgian tradition and monastic heritage: pale walls, wood and large arched windows that frame the cathedral like a picture. The rooms of forty and forty seven square metres look out to the Caucasus range, the monastery or the village, they are finished in natural materials and warm earth tones, and from the balconies you watch the sun rise and set over the church. For body and mind there are yoga, meditation, Pilates, a spa and padel courts.

The restaurant is called Satrapezo, after the monastery refectory where meals were long eaten with humility and gratitude. Its cooking keeps to the recipes of the monastery and the surrounding villages, and preserves, herbs, cheeses and honey for it are still made the old way by local nuns. Guests are taken to the Badagoni winery and through the vineyards, and for those staying at the hotel alone the old monastery marani is opened, where the tradition of qvevri wine was kept for centuries.