Get thee to a nunnery: the beautiful Bodbe nunnery

In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1), Hamlet says to Ophelia: Get thee to a nunnery. He should have been referring to the beautiful Bodbe nunnery.

The Monastery of St. Nino at Bodbe, a small town in eastern Georgia, in the wine region of Kakheti is a well-known monastery. It is a 9th century Georgian Orthodox monastic complex and the administrative centre of the Bishops of Bodbe. Originally it was named after St. Nino, the 4th century female apostle (338-340).

The Bodbe monastery is about two kilometres from the picturesque town of Sighnagi. It is a major pilgrimage site and functions today as a nunnery – a convent.

It began as a small medieval monastery where Nino was buried. The church was built between the 9th and 11th centuries; a small church with an apse built over St. Nino’s grave that is now integrated into a larger basilica. In 1615 it was heavily destroyed but restored. It was repaired again in 1823 and adorned with murals. A separate belltower was built next to the church between 1862 and 1885. It was also in the 1860s when the chanting school was established. From 1889 Bodbe opened the nunnery and also a school for needlework.

In 1994 the Soviet government closed the monastery and converted it into a hospital. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Bodbe monastery resumed as a nunnery in 1991. Further restorations were conducted in 2003, and from 2010 work on a new church commenced about 100 metres from the old one – it is almost finished (the top photograph and the photographs below).

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The grounds are gorgeous – with large cyprus trees and a sloping terrace that leads to the newly built church, still under construction. The views of the Alazani Valley and the Greater Caucasus mountains are stunning. So if you are in the Kakheti Region of Georgia, near Sighnagi, get thee to a nunnery, the beautiful Bodbe nunnery.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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