Click on the pictures, some can be enlarged!

1980 Victor in Mukhagdverdi

 In 1980, roaming the city, I met Victor by chance - or better, he approached me near his house and office on the left bank - first in French then in German. Delighted to have found a foreigner who was interested in contemporary architecture, he drove me to a VIP-cemetery at Mukhagdverdi overlooking Mtskheta where he had built a chapel á la Le Corbusier. A sensational building considering that this was Brezhnev's Soviet Union.

Djorbenadze's cemetery chapel at Mukhagdverdi.

1984-1989 The Wedding Cathedral

When I arrived in Tbilisi four years later I noticed a stark new building on a promontory above the Kura. A cathedral for all I knew! The taxi driver could not explain its purpose - I did not understand enough Russian - and he had never heard of Victor Djorbenadze. Merab had never been there either, but pushed by me, he eventually made contact with Djorbenadze, and Victor gave us a leisurely tour taking us into every nook and cranny from the roof to the unfinished sub-basement.

 Five massive shells wrap the elliptical narthex ( view from the south) The altar-apse (east) is on the right, the bell-cage still on the ground. Notice - click on the picture for an enlargement - a dwarfed Merab is gazing up from directly underneath the crane tower!

 If the outside of this building is impressive its interior is a highly sophisticated assemblage of architectural elements, many specifically Georgian. The internal resolution of the shell structure produces a space, which rivals that of Southern German Baroque churches, e.g. Balthasar Neumann's Vierzehnheiligen. The relationship of the various parts becomes clearer if one consults the construction plan further down. Two mirror-image spiral columns, one is seen here, carry the weight of the heightened roof structure above the altar apse. The bridge between them is intended for a choir - as in other Eastern-Orthodox churches there is no organ or instrumental music, only the vox humanum may sing the praise of God. Victor demonstrated the excellent, clear acoustics by singing a part of the Orthodox liturgy from up there. Eventually he had frescoes painted onto the flat wall surface between the column and the small door. The remaining walls are faced with limestone tiles.

Victor cited Le Corbusier's church at Rongchamp as an influence. This may be true for Djorbenadze's version of architecture brút, but this building is more emotional and humane than Le Corbusier's cool design and certainly more imaginative.

The ceiling above the altar is deep blue and supported by heavy, curved and gilded steel-girders. A fantastic effect.

 Perhaps this photo reflects the subjective impression of the complex interior most closely. To the left the ceiling over the proscenium and the "Fountain of Life" is seen. It resembles the wooden false-dome structures of the oldest Georgian buildings - and similar stacked roofs in Buddhist Central Asia.

 The center of the proscenium is the "Fountain of Life," connected in Orthodoxy with the Mother of God. In 1980 it was unfinished and could not be photographed effectively. After the 1986 inauguration of the building Victor sent me a set of pictures to show the sparse interior decorations.

The "Fountain of Life," an octagonal "well" which reaches through three sub-levels to the very rock on which the building stands. Following a design by Victor the well is crowned by a metal sculpture by the brothers Irakli and Gogo Otchiauri: two peacocks supporting a globe on which sit two doves - symbols of physical and spiritual love. (photo by Djorbenadze, 1986) The "well" is a reminder of the octagonal structure at the center of Sv. Nino's church at Djvari Metskheti. This structure had great symbolic importance for Djorbenadze, it crystallized the humanist aspect of life..

 Victor and Merab in the construction bureau in the cathedral. Victor had pulled out a floor plan of the building to explain his ideas, he stood back and smiled. "Take a look! What do you see?" On first glance I saw a face, perhaps a Chinese-monkey mask, but then in a flash I knew what it was: the anatomical cross-section of a female abdomen.... The uterus, the ovaries, the radiating ovum, and the vagina exiting between the two slabs of the bell-tower. This insight came so sudden and was so strong that my thought had escaped before I realized what I was saying. Victor stared at me and then shook his head. "Yes, that's what it is," he said raising his bushy brows, "You are the only person who has seen that.... My mother is a gynecologist. I took the design from one of her books. - But how could you know?" He spontaneously gave me the plan, which for several years hung in my office.

Seen from the west, the left spiral block, resembling a snail, is, according to Victor, "male," here the groom's party assembles. The arcades on the outside of this block are reminiscent of the balconies of the palaces of the Georgian kings.... The bride enters through the right, "female" spiral block with its six asymmetrical window holes. The pair meets in front of the altar. After the ceremony they pass the fountain of life and exit through the central door between the slabs of the bell-tower. Baptisms were to take place in the innermost turn of the female spiral. - Merab got married in this cathedral in 1998!

1989 with Cornelius

In 1989 I took Nino, Merab, the Shcherbakovs, and Irakli there. The frescoes were finished, and the lighting fixtures and the stained glass windows had been installed. These sparse embellishments left the architecture as bare as Victor had envisioned. The building continued to be overlooked by most of the Tbilisi intelligentsia and the Patriarchy. A Swedish ignoramus objected vehemently to its existence - to them this was deplorable "Soviet" architecture....

On the western exit-stairs Djorbenadze had erected a column on which he wanted to place a copy of Praxitiles' Hermes (in the Museum in Olympia) carrying his son by Aphrodite on his arm: Hermaphrodites! Apparently this project did not succeed, and he replaced the sculpture with a cast bronze copy of Hellenistic Hermaphrodite from the second-century AD found in an archeological dig in the Georgian Kolchis....

On my next visit to Tbilisi in 2001 this monument to Georgian spiritual strength and spectacular piece of world architecture had sunk into disuse and was crumbling. The Patriarch, financed by President Shevardnadze, was building an immense "Church of all Faiths" to immortalize themselves. The Wedding Palace was for sale. Thank God, the government did not have the funds to put it under the hammer. It was, as Djorbenadze had said, "cast in concrete." The building would weather not only Communism but also the times thereafter!

The story has a typical, novo-Georgian happy-end. In 2001 the Wedding Palace was bought by the Georgian, formerly Muscovite, Oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili for a cool US$ 10 Million - paid to a nephew of Eduard Shevardnadze..... Because Badri is wanted by the Russian Mafia as well as by Interpol the building is protected by state police and off-limits to the curious. A friend of mine who has had access to Patarkatsishvili and has visited the Wedding Cathedral reports that its interior has been renovated. Badri uses it as his personal townhouse...!

.....Did I hear Victor laugh from his grave?