Shida Kartli
Inner Kartli in the country's centre; the rock town of Uplistsikhe, Gori. Part of it (Tskhinvali) is outside Tbilisi's control.
Shida Kartli («Inner Kartli») is a central region on both banks of the Mtkvari at the foot of the Trialeti and Caucasus ranges; its administrative centre, Gori, is Georgia's fifth-largest city.
The region was the political and spiritual heart of ancient Kartli: the cave city of Uplistsikhe was already active in the Bronze Age, and the 7th-century Ateni Sioni church holds the earliest known examples of both Georgian scripts, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli.
Since 1992 the region's northern part (Java Municipality and parts of Kareli and Gori municipalities) has been under the control of the authorities of the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia. In August 2008 the Russo-Georgian war passed through Shida Kartli: Gori was bombed and held for several days, and tens of thousands left the villages along the line. The administrative boundary line runs across the region and has crept further inland over the years, cutting villages off from their fields and orchards.
Sources do not single out a separately documented Shida Kartli costume tradition, unlike mountainous Khevsureti or Svaneti: the region, neighbouring the capital, wore the general lowland Kartli costume: a chokha for men, a katibi dress for women.
What to see
- UplistsikheA cave city on a cliff above the Mtkvari, inhabited from 1000 BC; a major pre-Christian religious and political centre of Kartli, sacked by the Mongols in the 13th century.
- Gori FortressA citadel above the city, fortified as early as antiquity; it took its present form under Rostom of Kartli (1630s) and Erekle II (1774), and was badly damaged in the 1920 earthquake.
- Stalin Museum, GoriA memorial complex on the birthplace of Joseph Stalin (1878), opened in 1957; one of Georgia's most visited and most debated museums, and its content and framing remain contested.
- Ateni Sioni ChurchA 7th-century church south of Gori with 11th-century frescoes and the earliest known Nuskhuri (835) and Mkhedruli (980s) inscriptions, the oldest dated examples of these scripts.
- Surami FortressA medieval stronghold on the pass between eastern and western Georgia; associated with the legend of a youth walled up alive, the subject of Parajanov's film «The Legend of Suram Fortress» (1985).