Zemo Krikhi church of Holy Archangels this small in size but still very important monument is located in the highland village of Zemo (Upper) Krikhi in the historical province of Racha. Dedicated to the Archangels, the church was built in X-th century.
The construction with an extended apce that is provided with two niches – one at each side, has got very tall, almost tower-like main hall where the walls are decorated with vaults. Both the exterior (tympanum of the southern entrance) and interior (column capitals, lion images cut at the bottom of the apce ,etc.) of this specific and lovely building are richly adorned with perfect fretwork and stone-cut images.
Several decades after its completion, sometime in the first third of XI c. the Eristavs of Racha attached two porches to the church from south and west. This latter is currently in ruins while the former is still in good repair. Both porches were adorned with the richest fretwork, basically of floral motifs. Those decorations are eloquent proves of the highest level of craftsmanship of masons who had worked on that monument. The existence of local, Racha school of fretwork is almost doubtless, as far as the adornment and decoration of monuments in that part of Georgia positively differ from the respective contemporaneous samples whether in Kartli or Imereti.
Following the construction of the aforementioned two porches, the church interior was adorned with wall paining. Containing the scenes of all great religious holidays, and several separate frescoes of the saints, it also had a row with the images of the church building donors, thus making this particular wall painting one of the best samples of the medieval Georgian monumental painting. Unfortunately in mid-XXc heavy rainfalls seriously damaged the wall painting.
Alas, the worth had yet to come and the church was half-destructed by the earthquake of 1991, when almost all frescoes spared by rain were perished (during the restoration activities carried out through 60-70-ies of XX c the mid-XIX c western attachment to the main body of the church was removed). Currently there is a theoretical possibility of full scale reconstruction of the building but the ratio between the original paintings survived and the internal space of the restored building is yet to be specified.