The Katskhi monastery has a great history. The building of so remarkable a church on this spot suggests that Katskhi must in its day have been a military-strategic and ecclesiastical center. At various times it was the family church and burial place of various feudal houses. The church was built at the turn of the 10th–11th centuries. Construction of the main part began after Rati Baghvashi, expelled from Kldekari by Bagrat III, "settled in his patrimony of Argveti" — that is, after 989, at the close of the 10th century — and was completed at the end of Bagrat's reign, in 1010–1014. This is confirmed by the inscription on the tympanum of the southwest entrance: "Holy Trinity, glorify Bagrat, established by Thee, king of the Abkhazians and Georgians, great curopalates of Tao and the Rans and Kakhs and of all the East."