Metekhi Church

At least twice foreign conquerors (Jalaledin in 1226 and the Persians in 1522) used the bridge for forcible conversion of the Georgian population to Islam (many resisted and were tossed into the river). The bridge was controlled by a fortification on the rocky outcrop above it, where you can now see the Metekhi Church and a 1960s equestrian statue of King Vakhtang Gorgasali. This is where Gorgasali built his palace, and the site’s original church, when he made Tbilisi his capital in the 5th century. King David the Builder had his palace here too, and it was here that Queen Tamar married her second husband, David Soslan. That palace and its accompanying church were destroyed by the Mongols in 1235. The palace too passed through several incarnations until its final destruction in the Persian sacking of 1795.