The Five-Cross Flag: How Georgia's Medieval Banner Came Back to Life

A Flag You Recognise Instantly

Few national flags are as easy to describe as the flag of Georgia. It has a plain white background, a large red cross that runs from edge to edge and divides the flag into four equal quarters, and a smaller red cross in the middle of each quarter. That makes five crosses in total, which is why Georgians call it the khutjvriani drosha, the Five-Cross Flag. Its proportions are 2:3, meaning that the flag is one and a half times as long as it is high.

Only two colours are used: white and red. There is no text, no star and no coat of arms. This simplicity makes the flag striking from a distance and easy to draw, which is one reason it has become such a popular sight on government buildings, at sports matches and in the hands of Georgians around the world.

Although the design looks modern and clean, the Five-Cross Flag is not a recent invention. It is a revived medieval banner. Georgia officially adopted it as the national flag in January 2004, but it had been associated with the old Kingdom of Georgia for centuries before that.

Why Crosses? Georgia and Christianity

To understand the flag, it helps to know how deeply Christianity is woven into Georgian history. In the early fourth century, the eastern Georgian kingdom of Kartli, known to Greek and Roman writers as Iberia, adopted Christianity as its state religion. This makes Georgia one of the oldest Christian nations in the world. According to tradition, the faith was spread by Saint Nino, a woman from Cappadocia who is still deeply honoured in Georgia today.

Over the following centuries, churches and monasteries became centres of learning, art and national identity. During long periods when Georgia was surrounded by powerful empires with different religions, the Christian faith became one of the main things that held Georgians together. Placing crosses on a national banner was therefore a natural way to express who the people were.

Saint George, the patron saint

The large central cross is a Saint George's Cross: a red cross on a white field. Saint George is the patron saint of Georgia and one of the most beloved saints in the country. Georgians celebrate his feast day, called Giorgoba, on 23 November, and there is a well-known saying that Georgia has as many churches dedicated to Saint George as there are days in the year. Images of the saint on horseback, slaying a dragon, appear in Georgian icons, frescoes and metalwork, and he is also shown on the country's coat of arms.

Many people assume that the English name of the country comes from Saint George. It is an attractive idea, but most historians think otherwise. The name is generally traced to the Persian word gurj, used for the Georgians, which passed into other languages through Arabic and later European travellers. Georgians themselves call their country Sakartvelo, meaning “land of the Kartvelians”.

The Four Smaller Crosses

The four small crosses are not ordinary crosses with straight arms. Each one is a Bolnur-Katskhuri cross, a traditional Georgian form whose arms widen towards the ends. The name comes from two important places in Georgian Christian heritage. Bolnisi is home to the Bolnisi Sioni church, built in the fifth century, which contains some of the oldest dated inscriptions written in the Georgian alphabet and is decorated with carved crosses of this kind. Katskhi, in western Georgia, is famous for its medieval church and for the Katskhi Pillar, a tall natural rock column with a tiny church on top.

By choosing this particular shape, the designers of the modern flag gave it a distinctly Georgian character. The large Saint George's Cross links Georgia to the wider Christian world, while the small crosses point to the country's own ancient art and architecture.

A resemblance to the Jerusalem Cross

The arrangement of one large cross surrounded by four small ones also recalls the Jerusalem Cross, a symbol used by the medieval Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. That emblem showed gold crosses on a silver field. Georgian kings had close religious ties to the Holy Land, where Georgian monks founded monasteries, including the Monastery of the Cross near Jerusalem. The five-cross pattern is often explained as one more sign of this connection, and in Christian symbolism five crosses are sometimes said to stand for Christ and the four Evangelists, or for the five wounds of Christ. These interpretations are traditional rather than official: Georgian law describes the flag's design but does not assign a single fixed meaning to each cross.

A Banner of the Medieval Kingdom

Georgia was united into a single kingdom at the beginning of the eleventh century. It reached the height of its power and culture under King David IV, known as David the Builder, and later under Queen Tamar, in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This era is remembered as Georgia's Golden Age, when the kingdom stretched across much of the Caucasus and Georgian literature, architecture and science flourished. Shota Rustaveli's epic poem The Knight in the Panther's Skin dates from this time.

Some of the best evidence for the old Georgian banner comes from medieval European maps. In the fourteenth century, Mediterranean mapmakers drew nautical charts, known as portolan charts, that marked important cities with their flags. On a chart made in 1367 by the Venetian brothers Domenico and Francesco Pizzigano, the flag of Tbilisi is drawn as a large cross with a smaller cross in each quarter, the same basic pattern as today's flag.

Medieval flags did not work like modern national flags. There was no law fixing an exact design, and kings, princes and armies used a variety of banners. What survived over the centuries was the idea that a white banner with a red cross belonged to Georgia and its patron saint. The modern Five-Cross Flag is a careful reconstruction of that tradition rather than an exact copy of one single historical object.

The Flags in Between

Between the end of the medieval kingdom and 2004, Georgia flew several very different flags. Knowing them helps explain why the return of the five crosses felt so meaningful.

The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918–1921

After the collapse of the Russian Empire, Georgia declared independence on 26 May 1918 and founded the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Its flag, designed by the artist Iakob Nikoladze, had a deep red, wine-coloured field with a narrow black and white band in the upper corner next to the pole. The republic was short-lived: in 1921 the Soviet Red Army invaded, and Georgia became part of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet period

During Soviet rule, Georgia used flags based on the red flag of the Soviet Union, with communist symbols such as the hammer and sickle and a red star. Displaying the 1918 flag was forbidden, which turned it into a symbol of resistance and the hope of independence.

Independence again

In the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union weakened, Georgians began to demonstrate openly for independence, often carrying the dark red 1918 flag. On 9 April 1989, Soviet troops violently broke up a peaceful demonstration in central Tbilisi, killing about twenty people. The tragedy strengthened the independence movement. In 1990 the 1918 flag was restored as the official flag, and on 9 April 1991 Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union. For the next thirteen years, the wine-red flag with the black and white band remained the national flag.

The Return of the Five Crosses

During the 1990s, interest in Georgia's medieval past grew strongly. The Georgian Orthodox Church regained an important place in public life, and many people felt that the national symbols should reflect the country's long history as a Christian kingdom rather than only the brief republic of 1918. The Five-Cross Flag began to appear at public events, and proposals to make it the national flag were discussed.

The decisive moment came with politics. The United National Movement, a party led by Mikheil Saakashvili, adopted the Five-Cross Flag as its symbol. In November 2003, after disputed parliamentary elections, huge peaceful protests took place in Tbilisi. Demonstrators carried roses as a sign of non-violence, giving the events the name Rose Revolution, and many of them waved the white flag with five red crosses. President Eduard Shevardnadze resigned, and Saakashvili won the presidential election in January 2004.

That same month, the Parliament of Georgia approved the Five-Cross Flag as the official national flag. Georgia marks 14 January as National Flag Day. Later in 2004, the country also adopted a new coat of arms: a red shield showing Saint George slaying the dragon, supported by two golden lions and crowned with a Georgian royal crown, with the motto Strength is in Unity.

Debate about the change

Not everyone welcomed the new flag immediately. Some critics argued that a flag strongly connected with one political party should not become a national symbol, and others preferred the 1918 flag because of its link to Georgia's first modern independence. Over time, however, the Five-Cross Flag gained very wide acceptance. Today it is used by Georgians of all political views, and the earlier flag is remembered with respect as part of the national story.

The Flag in Everyday Life

The Five-Cross Flag flies over government buildings, schools and border posts, and it is also very popular in daily life. Fans wave it at football and rugby matches, where Georgia's national rugby team has become one of the country's sporting success stories. It appears on souvenirs, clothing and car stickers, and it is often seen at concerts and festivals. Georgians living abroad use it to show pride in their homeland.

The flag is also a powerful symbol in Georgia's relations with the rest of Europe. The country has often displayed it alongside the blue flag of the European Union, especially since Georgia was granted the status of a candidate for EU membership in December 2023.

Interesting details

• The Five-Cross Flag is one of very few national flags that show more than one cross.
• It is sometimes confused with the flag of England, which is also a red Saint George's Cross on white but has no smaller crosses.
• Because the design is perfectly symmetrical and has no lettering, the flag looks exactly the same when seen from the back.
• Its Georgian name, khutjvriani drosha, simply means “five-cross flag”, so the nickname used in English is a direct translation.

What the Five-Cross Flag Teaches Us

The story of Georgia's flag shows that national symbols can change with history. In just over one century, Georgia went from a Soviet red banner to the wine-red republican flag and then to a reconstructed medieval design. Each flag reflected what people at the time wanted to say about their country: independence, revolution, or continuity with an ancient past.

The Five-Cross Flag was chosen to tell the longest story of all. Its large cross honours Saint George, its small crosses recall churches built more than fifteen hundred years ago, and its white and red colours connect modern Georgia to the banners of its medieval kings. When you see it, you are looking at a symbol that is both very old and, as an official national flag, still remarkably young.