Ananuri Fortress

Ananuri Fortress rises above the Zhinvali Reservoir beside the Georgian Military Road, some seventy kilometres north of Tbilisi. This was the seat of the castle of the Eristavis of Aragvi, the rulers of the gorge; the complex took its present shape in the sixteenth century and was added to for two more centuries. Inside the walls two churches survive, along with a tower with a pyramidal top in which the last defence was made in 1739: the fortress was stormed that year by Shanshe, the Eristavi of Ksani, and Eristavi Bardzim perished in the fire together with his men. The main church is the Church of the Assumption of 1689; its southern facade is decorated with a large carved cross entwined with a grapevine, and soot-blackened fragments of painting have survived inside. Beside it stands the earlier Gvtaeba church of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, very small and almost without carving. The walls, with their round and rectangular towers, run down the slope to the water itself: the valley was flooded when the Zhinvali hydroelectric plant was built, and the fortress ended up on the shore. In the lower tier of the fortifications stand a bell tower and the small Mkurnali church. Ananuri has long been proposed by the Georgian government for the World Heritage List.

On the map