Ananuri

Ananuri is the picture everyone takes on the way north from Tbilisi: a walled compound with a tall square tower and two churches, standing on a slope above the Aragvi, with the blue water of the Zhinvali Reservoir spread out below. It was the stronghold of the eristavis, the dukes of Aragvi, whose domain controlled the valley where roads from the Terek gorge and from inner Kartli met – the same line followed today by the Georgian Military Road towards Kazbek and the Russian border.

Most of what survives dates from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The complex is really two fortifications joined by a crenellated curtain wall: an upper castle dominated by the square tower known as Sheupovari, which is well preserved, and a lower one with a round tower that is largely in ruins. Inside the walls stand two churches. The older Church of the Virgin, built of brick in the first half of the 17th century, holds tombs of the dukes and a stone canopy put up by the widow of Duke Edisher, who died in 1674. The larger domed Church of the Mother of God dates from 1689 and is the one to linger over: its facades are covered with carving, including a vine-scroll cross on the south wall, and inside are the remains of frescoes, most of them lost to fire in the 18th century.

That fire belongs to Ananuri's darkest episode. In 1739 the rival duke Shanshe of Ksani besieged the castle, cut the water supply, took the garrison's surrender on oath and then killed Duke Bardzim and his family; those who held out in the Sheupovari tower were burned inside it. The tower was walled up as a tomb and not reopened until archaeologists entered it in 1939. A few years after the massacre King Teimuraz II abolished the duchy and took the fortress under the crown, and it stayed in use into the early 19th century. A local legend explains the name through a girl called Ana from the village of Nuri, who is said to have died rather than betray the castle's secret water tunnel. Ananuri has been on Georgia's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage since 2007.

Getting there

Ananuri lies beside the Georgian Military Road in Dusheti Municipality, around 60–70 km north of Tbilisi by road (about 54 km in a straight line). Tbilisi International Airport (TBS) is roughly 59 km away as the crow flies. The complex stands right by the road, so it is an easy stop on any trip north along the road towards Mount Kazbek.