By Prof. Giorgi Pkhakadze, MD, MPH, PhD · 15/09/2026
Ananuri is the first stop on the road north, and for most visitors the first Georgian fortress they see: two churches, a tower, a curtain wall with battlements, all in warm stone above water so blue it looks retouched. It is one of the most photographed places in the country, and the photograph is a fiction — a beautiful one.
The fortress
Ananuri was the seat of the Dukes of Aragvi, the family that ruled this valley from the 13th century and controlled the road to the pass. The complex you see is mostly 17th century: a large church of the Assumption, built in 1689 and carved on its south wall with a cross rising from a vine, two winged lions and a grapevine — Georgian stone-carving at its most confident; a smaller, older church beside it; and a square tower with a peaked roof in the Khevsur style, the oldest structure, from which the dukes watched the valley.
The dukes were not loved. In 1739 a rival clan, the Shanshes, stormed Ananuri, set fire to the tower with the ducal family inside, and ended the line. Some of the burn marks are still visible. Four years later the peasants of the Aragvi rose against the next set of masters and the king took the valley for himself. Ananuri became a royal garrison, then a Russian one, then nothing.
The lake
For three hundred years the fortress stood above a river gorge with the village of Ananuri below it. In 1986 the Soviet authorities dammed the Aragvi at Zhinvali to supply Tbilisi with water and power. The village was moved; the valley filled; the fortress found itself on a shore. The reservoir is the reason the water is that colour — glacial meltwater, held still — and the reason the view exists at all. The drowned village is still down there. In dry autumns, when the level falls, its church tower appears.
What to do there
Forty-five minutes is enough: the carved facade, the frescoes inside the large church (17th-century, heavily damaged, with a Last Judgement worth finding), and the climb up the tower for the view over the wall to the water. There is a small market at the gate for churchkhela and honey. In summer, boats run on the reservoir from the far shore.
See it with GTour
Ananuri is the first stop on every GTour journey north: the Kazbegi day trip, the two-day journey and the Gudauri escape.
ქართულად: ანანური — ციხე ტბაზე, რომელიც არ უნდა არსებობდეს
