The Katskhi pillar is a 40-meter-high limestone column. Information about it appeared to the general public in 1944, when the first expedition climbed the column. The researchers found the remains of churches and other buildings of the 5th-6th centuries on top of the column. It is believed that they were built by hermit monks from the Middle east. The construction of monastic chapels in such places were linked to extreme ascetism which was spread in prehistoric Asia in the VI century and, above all, in Syria, which Christian Georgia had close relations with. Currently, a monastery church and cells for hermits are built on the Katskhi pillar and a hermit monk serves there. Visitors are not allowed to climb the Katskhi Pillar..