Samtskhe-Javakheti
A southern highland; the Rabati fortress, the cave city of Vardzia, the high lakes of Javakheti.
Samtskhe-Javakheti occupies the country's south, on the border with Turkey and Armenia: mountainous Samtskhe (Meskheti) in the west and the volcanic Javakheti plateau in the east, home to Georgia's largest lakes: Paravani, Tabatskuri, Khanchali.
Its administrative centre, Akhaltsikhe («New Fortress»), is overlooked by the restored Rabati citadel, with a mosque, synagogue and church under one roof, a symbol of the region's centuries of religious diversity.
In Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda municipalities the overwhelming majority of the population are ethnic Armenians, descendants of settlers from the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century; the region is also known for the cave cities of Vardzia and Vanis Kvabebi.
Sources describe a distinct, widely documented Meskhetian costume only sparsely; this borderland with Turkey and Armenia wore a variant of the general Georgian costume with noticeable influence from neighbouring cultures in fabrics and trim, but few detailed descriptions have survived.
Javakheti has its own Armenian costume tradition (embroidered dresses, coin-adorned headdresses) brought by early-19th-century settlers and existing alongside the Georgian one.
What to see
- Rabati CastleA 9th-century citadel above Akhaltsikhe, fully reconstructed in 2011–2012; inside stand a church, an 18th-century mosque and a synagogue under one roof.
- Sapara MonasteryA 9th-century monastery in a forested gorge below Akhaltsikhe, the ancestral seat of the Jakeli princes; abandoned from the 17th century, revived after 1989.
- Khertvisi FortressOne of Georgia's oldest fortresses, on a cliff at the confluence of the Mtkvari and Paravani, first mentioned in the 10th–11th centuries; its present walls date to 1354.
- Vardzia cave cityA 12th-century monastery-fortress hewn into the cliff on the orders of Queen Tamar; at its height it held up to 6,000 rooms on 13 levels, half destroyed by the earthquake of 1283.