Martvili Monastery stands on the highest hill in the village of Martvili in western Georgia, which gave it strategic importance. It is an active monastic complex of the Georgian Orthodox Church and the seat of a bishop of the Chkhondidi eparchy. Its main building is the Martvili-Chkondidi Cathedral. The word Chkoni means oak in the Mingrelian language.
The site was once a pagan sacred center with a large oak tree that people worshipped. After the local population converted to Christianity, the tree was cut down, and a church named for Saint Andrew was built over its roots. The source dates the original church to the late seventh century, though it also gives the first century as a possibility.
Invasions destroyed the earlier church, and the monastery was rebuilt in the tenth century with funds from King Giorgi II. Frescoes from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries survive.
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