Tiri Monastery  The Tiri monastery () is a 13th-century church near Tskhinvali in what is now the disputed territory of South Ossetia. Built as a Georgian Orthodox monastery in a hall church plan, it bears medieval frescoes and Georgian inscriptions. After the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, the Georgians lost access to the monastery. In 2015, the church building was subjected to maintenance works which infringed on authenticity and partially damaged the frescoes, leading to a controversy in Tskhinvali and protests from Georgia. The monastery is inscribed on the list of Georgia's Immovable Cultural Monuments of National Significance. The Tiri monastery is located near the village of Monasteri, in the valley of Tiri, a tributary of the Greater Liakhvi River, 9 km northwest of Tskhinvali. The monastery consists of the church of the Nativity of the Theotokos, a bell-tower, and the ruins of a refectory, rock-cut cells, a circuit wall, and other accessory structures. They are mostly built of dressed basalt blocks, with the additional use of brick and cobblestone. The church of the Nativity of the Theotokos, measuring 15.7 × 8.8 m., is dated to the latter half of the 13th century. It is built as a rectangular hall church with an apse of the sanctuary separated from the nave by a contemporaneous five-arched iconostasis, which has lost its original appearance and has then been somewhat haphazardly reassembled. The sanctuary bears the surviving fragments of the 14th–15th century frescoes. In the 1420s, the church was expanded with a now-ruined porch and an eukterion. The north annex, a crypt of the noble family of Tavkhelidze, was added in the 1480s. The façades are adorned with decorative stone carvings. A two-storey bell-tower was constructed adjacent to the west side of the church at the end of the 14th century by the Tavkhelidze, who owned the monastery. In the 16th century Tiri passed to the princes Taktakidze, who built a family crypt at the northeast end of the church in 1682. Three stone inscriptions in Georgian survive on the outer walls of the monastery: two on the north and south annexes of the church, respectively, and one on the bell-tower.