Pantheon Hodzhivanka

The cemetery was organized on lands that in 1612 Shah Abbas granted Bebut-Bek (a representative of the Armenian family of Bebutovs). The son of Bebut-Bek Aslan Melik-Bebut, the treasurer of the Georgian king Rostom, expanded the original territory of the cemetery, conducted a water supply, planted trees, and in 1655 built the church of St. Astvatsatsin . The name Khojivank is associated with the name Khoja Bebut (Big Bebut). The inscription “In the summer of Armenian 1104th, by the will of God, I, Khoja Bebut, and my brother Khatin, and my wife Lali, built this holy church of Aslan,” remained in the Tbilisi Historical and Ethnographic Museum ^[1] . Surb Astvatsatsin church was dedicated to the Virgin, had a fence and a flowering garden around. Later, Bebutov’s rights were extended by Teimuraz II and Heraclius II.

In 1899, the cemetery was surrounded by a massive wall, by which time it had become the largest Armenian cemetery in Tbilisi. The number of graves in the period before its destruction amounted to more than 90,000.

Most of the memorial cemetery and the Church of the Most Holy Theotokos (Surb Astvatsatsin) were destroyed in 1937, the destruction of the remaining part of the cemetery continued between 1995 and 2004 during the construction of the Trinity Tbilisi Cathedral ( Tsminda Sameba ) ^[2] .