Ateni — The Village in the Tana Gorge

Tucked into the Tana river gorge just south of Gori, Ateni is a quiet Georgian village whose narrow valley holds a domed church of the 7th century, some of the oldest surviving inscriptions in the Georgian scripts, and a sparkling-wine tradition praised since the Middle Ages.

Ateni lies in the valley of the Tana River, in Gori Municipality of the Shida Kartli region, where the lowlands of inner Kartli give way to the northern spurs of the Trialeti Range, part of the Lesser Caucasus. The gorge opens roughly 8 to 12 kilometres south of Gori. Today the name 'Ateni' covers two neighbouring villages: Didi Ateni ('Greater Ateni') and Patara Ateni ('Lesser Ateni').

The valley's central monument is Ateni Sioni, an early Georgian Orthodox church of the 7th century, whose precise dating is debated between the early-to-mid 7th century and the 680s–690s. It is a domed tetraconch of the 'Jvari type' — a four-apse plan with niches opening onto the central space — closely related to the celebrated Jvari Monastery at Mtskheta. Its name, Sioni, recalls Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

Ateni Sioni carries more wall inscriptions than any other church in Georgia. Cut, painted, and scratched into its stone across the 8th to 19th centuries, they appear in several languages — Georgian, Greek, Armenian, Arabic, Syriac, Hebrew, and Slavic — and range from fresco captions and epitaphs to donor records, pilgrims' graffiti, and historical notices.

Ateni gives its name to Atenuri, a registered Georgian appellation — a Protected Designation of Origin, recognised internationally under the European Union–Georgia agreement on geographical indications — and the country's only PDO dedicated to sparkling wine. It is made from the local white grapes Chinuri and Goruli Mtsvane, with Aligoté also permitted, from vineyards at roughly 580 to 750 metres on the slopes above the Tana.

Beyond its monuments, the Ateni Gorge is prized for its scenery: dramatic rock formations, grassy knolls, moss-covered boulders, and alpine hillsides that give the valley a wild, largely undeveloped feel. The Tana, a river of about 39 kilometres, threads through the villages before joining the greater Mtkvari (Kura).

Ateni is reached from Gori, some 8 to 12 kilometres to the south; Gori itself sits about 85 kilometres west of Tbilisi, roughly an hour by road. The two villages remain small and rural, and the gorge stays refreshingly undeveloped, with few visitor amenities on site.