Memory
Vakhtang entered a pantheon of Georgian historical heroes already in the Middle Ages. A royal oriflamme of the Georgian Bagratids was known as "Gorgasliani", i.e., "of Gorgasali". It is sometimes supposed to be the earliest model of the current Georgian national flag. In popular memory, his image has acquired a legendary and romantic façade. Vakhtang is a subject of several folk poems and legends, extolling the king’s perceived greatness, enormous physical strength, courage and devoutness to Christianity.
Vakhtang has been credited with foundation of several towns, castles, and monasteries across Georgia, including the nation’s capital Tbilisi, where a street and a square bear his name, and a 1967 monument by the sculptor Elguja Amashukeli tops the Metekhi cliff. A legend has it that when King Vakhtang was in the forest, his falcon chased a pheasant. The bird fell into a hot water spring and the king and his servants saw the steam come out of the water. Surprised by the abundance of hot water, Vakhtang gave orders to build a city on this site and named it "Tbilisi", that is, "the site of warm springs".
Vakhtang was officially included in the Georgian Orthodox calendar – and a church built in his honor in the city of Rustavi – early in the 1990s, but he had presumably been considered a saint long before that. The Georgian church commemorates him as the Holy and Right-believing King Vakhtang on November 30 (O.S.: December 13).
The Vakhtang Gorgasal Order, created in 1992, is one of the highest military decorations in Georgia.
Read more about this topic: Vakhtang I Of Iberia
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“Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still, real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. How green was my valley then.”
—Philip Dunne (1908–1992)