Narikala

Narikala is the fortress on the ridge above old Tbilisi, where the Mtkvari river runs through a gorge and the hot springs that gave the city its name rise at the foot of the hill. Tbili means warm in Georgian. A fortress is thought to have stood here since the fourth century, when the region was contested between Rome and Sasanian Iran, and early sources call it Shuris-tsikhe, “fortress of envy” or “invidious fortress”.

Over the centuries Narikala passed through many hands. Arab emirs held Tbilisi for long periods and strengthened the walls; King David the Builder of Georgia recaptured the city in 1122; and the Mongols, Persians and Ottomans all held it in turn. Much of what stands today dates from later rebuilding, including the walls built by Persian and Ottoman garrisons.

In 1827, during Russian rule, an explosion in a store of gunpowder damaged the fortress severely. Today its long walls run down the ridge, and within them the Church of Saint Nicholas, rebuilt in the 1990s, stands in the old enclosure. A cable car lifts visitors from the riverbank to the fortress, and from its battlements the view takes in the sulphur bathhouses of Abanotubani with their brick domes, the old town's wooden balconies, and the aluminium statue of Mother of Georgia, Kartlis Deda, on the ridge nearby.