Sapara Monastery lies in a forested canyon in the Akhaltsikhe District of southern Georgia. It has existed since at least the ninth century, and it became a possession of the Jakeli family at the end of the thirteenth century. The Church of the Assumption of Saint Mary, probably from the tenth century, is the earliest in the complex. Beka I Jaqeli ordered the construction of Saint Saba's Church, and its architect, Peresasdze, signed his name on the western window arch of the portal.
Saint Saba's is a cross-in-square church of pink and yellow stone and the largest of the complex's 12 churches. Its dome has 16 windows, eight real and eight false. Its bell tower is among the oldest in Georgia. Frescoes from the fourteenth century show Saint Saba and the Jaqeli rulers.
The monastery was emptied in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries during the Ottoman expansion, and its treasures were moved to safer places.
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