By Prof. Giorgi Pkhakadze, MD, MPH, PhD · 15/09/2026
Uplistsikhe means “the lord’s fortress”, and it is the oldest urban settlement in Georgia: people were cutting rooms into this ridge by 1000 BC, and by the 6th century BC it was a town of several thousand, a pagan religious centre and a stop on the trade road between the Black Sea and Persia. It was still lived in when Genghis Khan’s grandson Hulagu destroyed it in the 13th century. Two millennia of habitation, carved rather than built.
What survives
About a tenth of the original town — 150 of an estimated 700 rock-cut structures — on a bare yellow ridge that heats like an oven in summer. A paved street, worn into a channel by centuries of feet, leads up through the town. Off it open the rooms: a great hall with a barrel-vaulted ceiling carved to imitate timber beams, called the queen’s hall for Tamar though she never lived here; a temple with a pit for sacrifices and niches for idols; a pharmacy with rows of small cavities for jars; a theatre, unusual this far east, with a stage and a pit for the orchestra; wine cellars with sunken qvevri holes, proof that the marani is at least as old as the town. Every room has a hearth cut into the floor and a hole above it for the smoke.
At the top is a small 10th-century church, built in brick when the pagan town had become Christian, sitting on the highest point like a full stop. A tunnel — the secret exit — runs from the town down through the rock to the river, and you can walk it.
Why it matters
Uplistsikhe is the Georgia before Christianity, before the alphabet, before Mtskheta was a capital: a Zoroastrian and sun-worshipping town connected to Persia and the steppe, with its own architecture — the imitation of wooden beams in stone shows what the buildings in the plains, long gone, must have looked like. It is also simply the most atmospheric ruin in the country: no fences to speak of, no reconstruction, the wind, the view over the Kura plain to the Caucasus, and the sense of standing where people stood three thousand years before you.
Practical
An hour and a half on the site is right. There is almost no shade — in July and August go early or late, with water and a hat. The rock is smooth and can be slippery; the paths are uneven. The tunnel is dark and low. The site sits fifteen minutes from Gori, and the two go together: the ancient town in the morning, Gori’s fortress and its notorious museum in the afternoon.
See it with GTour
Uplistsikhe is the centre of the Gori & Uplistsikhe day trip, the first stop on the road west in the Kutaisi & Western Georgia tour, and day six of Georgia in 7 days.
This story in Georgian — ქართულად: shenidasveneba.ge
ქართულად: უფლისციხე — კლდეში ნაკვეთი ქალაქი, რომელიც რომამდე არსებობდა
