In the past two decades, the Orthodox Church of Georgia as an institution has been considerably strengthened, and its influence in the public space has significantly grown. As demonstrated by numerous studies, this is partly due to the link between national and religious identities and to the instrumentalization of religion by political elites. However, the concrete ways in which the public authorities have sought to establish their legitimacy thanks to religious references remain to be scrutinized, as well as the constraints they are subjected to. This article focuses on the games of power and strategies of the Patriarchate and the Government around the construction and reconstruction of two cathedrals, Sameba and Bagrati, and on the challenges of building the symbolic national space. Through the analysis of the attempts of the Saakashvili Government to use the symbolic resources provided by major religious buildings, it sheds some light on the limits of the instrumentalization of Orthodoxy in the legitimization of power. Keywords: Orthodox Church of Georgia, national heritage, churches building, de-secularization, public space, religion and politics. The first anniversary of the "Rose Revolution", on November 23, 2004, was marked by the consecration of the Sameba (Holy Trinity) Cathedral by Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II in the presence of Orthodox hierarchs, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. This article was written as part of the CASCADE project (http://www.cascade-caucasus.eu/) Vremya soborov: kul'tovye zdaniya i politicheskaya legitim'nost ' v postsovetskoy Gruzii [Time of Cathedrals: Cult Buildings and Political Legitimacy in Post-Soviet Georgia]. 2016. N2. pp. 133-155. Serrano, Silvia (2016) 'The Time of Cathedrals: Religious Buildings and Political Legitimation in Post-Soviet Georgia", Gosudarstvo. religiia, tserkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom 34(2): 133-155. page 133other cults, as well as new political authorities - from President Mikheil Saakash ... Read more