Uplistsikhe

Cave town above the Mtkvari

The cave town is carved into the rock on the left bank of the Mtkvari, ten kilometres east of Gori. Its name means «the lord's fortress». People settled here from the early first millennium BC, and its height came in Hellenistic and early Roman times, when Uplistsikhe was the religious and political centre of pagan Kartli.

After the Christianisation of Kartli in the 4th century the town lost its role as a sanctuary but remained a fortress: in the 9th–11th centuries, while an Arab emirate held Tbilisi, Uplistsikhe was one of the strongholds of the Kartli rulers. In the 13th century the Mongols sacked it and the town gradually emptied.

Of some seven hundred rooms cut into the rock about a hundred and fifty survive: halls with coffered ceilings, the so-called hall of Queen Tamar, the so-called pharmacy, a tunnel down to the river. On top stands a three-nave basilica of the 9th–10th centuries, built over the caves. Today it is a museum reserve and is on Georgia's UNESCO tentative list.