Monastery of the Cross

This guide to the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem opens on a November night in 1960, when three Georgian scholars arrived on diplomatic passports, sent quietly with Khrushchev's blessing, to search these fortress-like walls for a face someone had painted over in black centuries earlier. It traces that face back to Shota Rustaveli, the medieval poet-monk who once lived here, and the debts that later forced the Georgian community to sell the monastery to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch. Listen for the column inside the basilica where the search was aimed.