Samtskhe-Javakheti: The Gorge and the Plateau

Two landscapes, one region

Southern Georgia is a river gorge lined with fortresses and a high volcanic plateau with lakes and ancient hillforts. They are different landscapes. Atskuri, Sapara, Khertvisi, Tmogvi and Vardzia all lie within 39.9 km of one another in a straight line, the widest pair being Atskuri and Vardzia, while the plateau's two lakes are 27.2 km apart between their centres.

XTOUR does not publish road conditions, driving times or opening hours for anything in this region. Those are local questions, and nothing below asserts one. What follows is what stands where.

Into the region, along the Mtkvari

Atskuri Fortress stands on the cliff over the Mtkvari at Atskuri village, the northernmost of the five, long a defensive post for the Borjomi valley, with a narrow tunnel cut down to the riverbank so the garrison could reach water under siege. Wars and earthquakes brought the walls down repeatedly, and each rebuilding left its own layer in the masonry, still visible. The ruins spread wide with the citadel at the highest point, and inside the circuit are the remains of a church with fragments of fresco. It was abandoned in the 1820s. Atskuri Cathedral, a separate monument, stands at the foot of the hill.

Sapara Monastery sits outside Akhaltsikhe, screened by forest and yellowish cliffs near the village of Ghrele. The domed thirteenth-century Church of St Saba stands beside a tenth-century Dormition church, and the frescoes inside St Saba's have come through the centuries in decent condition. Around them are a bell tower, monks' cells, farm buildings, and the ruined walls of a fortification and of a palace the Jaqelis used as a residence; they ruled Samtskhe from the late thirteenth century. The name means sheltered. Closed under Soviet rule, it has held a monastic community again since the 1980s.

XTOUR does not yet have a page for Akhaltsikhe. It does have destination guides for Borjomi and Bakuriani.

The gorge, and what it ends at

Khertvisi Fortress holds the rocky cape where the Paravani river meets the Mtkvari, on the valley road between Akhaltsikhe and Vardzia. The tenth-century citadel and its ring of walls are well preserved, reached by a footpath from Khertvisi village below; the walls rise straight out of the rock, and inside them are a small hall church and the remains of other buildings, with a tunnel that once carried water in from the north-west. It is part of the Vardzia-Khertvisi entry on Georgia's UNESCO tentative list; it is not inscribed. Tmogvi stands 9.8 km further along the same valley in a straight line: the ruined walls of a medieval fortress-town on a height above the gorge, where the river guards two sides and deep gorges the others. The Georgian chronicles record repeated attempts to take it that rarely succeeded. Earthquakes in 1088, 1283 and 1319 each did damage, and the Ottomans took it in 1578. It suits a traveller content with a ruin rather than a restored monument.

Vardzia is the southernmost of the five, 11 km from Khertvisi in a straight line: a monastery cut into the cliffs of Erusheti mountain above the left bank of the Mtkvari, laid out mainly in the twelfth century under Giorgi III and his daughter Queen Tamar. The visit is a walk through the cliff itself — tunnels joining floors of rock-cut rooms, a few surviving wine cellars that once held qvevri, and at the centre the Church of the Dormition, where the frescoes include the young Tamar standing beside her father, who holds a model of the church. Earthquakes and centuries of war took much of it, and part of it is in monastic use, so it is not purely a museum.

The plateau, a different landscape

East of Akhaltsikhe the land rises onto the Javakheti volcanic plateau. Paravani Lake sits at 2,073 metres between the Samsari and Javakheti ranges and is only 3.3 metres deep at most, a wide sheet of water rather than a deep mountain lake. Trout, carp, whitefish and barbel are among its fish, and in winter it ices over from December, with ice 47 to 73 centimetres thick, and whitefish are fished through it. Tabatskuri, also in Samtskhe-Javakheti and 27.2 km away in a straight line between the lake centres, sits at about 2,000 metres and holds some 221 million cubic metres of water, fed by snow, rain and groundwater, with its village built out on a small peninsula inside the Ktsia-Tabatskuri protected area. XTOUR does not yet have a page for either lake.

The two hillforts here, Shaori and Avranlo, are older than the medieval monuments in the gorge. Shaori is a megalithic stronghold of the second millennium BCE on a summit 2,752 metres up north-west of Paravani, built of large basalt blocks laid without mortar, split between two neighbouring peaks, its central enclosure entered through a single narrow gate on the eastern side. The national tourism administration places it on a walking route from Patara Samsari past Levani Lake to Tambovka on the Paravani shore. The route's length, difficulty and season are not given here. Avranlo stands across the regional boundary on the Tsalka plateau in Kvemo Kartli, not in Samtskhe-Javakheti: a cyclopean fortification of huge dry-laid stones rising in three tiers above the Ktsia river, dated to the first millennium BC, its walls two to two and a half metres thick. What survives is walling rather than buildings, and the upper enclosure has been broken up inside in a way archaeologists have not explained.

West, up the Kvabliani valley

Zarzma Monastery lies up the Kvabliani valley towards Adigeni, 32.5 km from Sapara in a straight line and named for its founder Serapion Zarzmeli. The present church and bell tower date from the early fourteenth century, and the paintings are what set it apart: portraits of Samtskhe nobles and of sixteenth-century historical figures, restored with the building in the twentieth century. The foundation goes back to the ninth. Okros Tsikhe stands on a rocky height above the same valley, 9.6 km from Zarzma in a straight line: a Jaqeli fortress whose name means Golden Fortress, known under Ottoman rule by the Turkish equivalent, Altunkala, as the centre of a district. Its plan follows the rock over several levels, with towers along the ramparts and stretches of wall standing about ten metres high. Its moment in the chronicles is 1578, when Princess Dedisimedi entrenched herself here before negotiating peace with Lala Mustafa Pasha.

What this guide does not tell you

XTOUR does not publish opening hours, admission prices, whether a site is staffed, what any approach road is like or whether any of it is open in winter. Check these locally before you go.

For Vardzia alongside Georgia's other monasteries and churches, see our guide to Georgian monasteries and churches, and for how long a trip to Georgia needs, see how many days you need in Georgia.