Gialia Monastery

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The Gialia Monastery (Georgian: ღალია, Ğalia; Greek: Γιαλιά) is the ruined medieval Georgian Orthodox monastery at the village of Gialia (Yialia), Paphos District, northwest Cyprus. The monastery is dedicated to the Virgin Mary (The Golden Virgin Mary of Gialia; Greek: Ιερά Μονή Παναγίας Χρυσογιαλιώτισσας, Panayia Chrysogialiotissa).

Located in a forest some five kilometers from the coast near the small town of Polis Chrysochous, the ruins were identified, in 1981, by the Georgian scholar Wachtang Djobadze of California State University on the basis of the medieval Georgian accounts. It was not, however, until 2006 that a systematic archaeological research followed after the Georgian and Cypriote governments agreed to jointly investigate the ruins.^[1]

The monastery is certainly attested in the twelfth century, when it was renovated at the behest of Queen Tamar of Georgia (1184-1213); and it has been suggested that it was in continuous existence at least since the end of the tenth century until it was abandoned in the fourteenth century and plundered and destroyed in the sixteenth. So far, the two main structures have been identified: the earlier Virgin church, and the later St. George's church dated probably to the eleventh and twelfth centuries respectively. Remains of Georgian paintings and inscriptions from the thirteen and fourteenth century have also survived.^[2][3]

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