Uplistsikhe

Uplistsikhe, “the fortress of the lord”, is a town cut into a sandstone ridge on the left bank of the Mtkvari river, about ten kilometres east of Gori in central Georgia. Over many centuries its people carved halls, houses, streets, cellars and temples out of the soft rock, so that the whole hillside is honeycombed with chambers, stairways and passages, some with carved ceilings imitating wooden beams.

Uplistsikhe was settled in the first millennium BCE and grew into one of the main towns of ancient Kartli, a religious centre with large pagan temples cut into the rock. It lay on the trade routes between Central Asia, Iran and the Black Sea, and archaeologists have found objects that travelled along them. After Kartli adopted Christianity in the fourth century, the town lost much of its religious importance, and in the ninth or tenth century a brick basilica was built at the top of the hill.

In the Middle Ages it was again a royal stronghold, and one great hall is known as the hall of Queen Tamar, who ruled Georgia at the height of its power around 1200. The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century brought its long decline, and it was eventually abandoned. Today visitors climb a stairway and a tunnel cut through the rock, walk its worn streets and look out over the river valley from the summit, where the green ribbon of the Mtkvari winds through the plain of Kartli towards Mtskheta and Tbilisi.