Uplistsikhe

It’s hard to imagine, as you scramble up and over the time-smoothed, pocked hilltop known as Uplistsikhe that in the Middle Ages it was home to 20,000 people, many of them artisans and merchants. These cave dwellings have ancient origins; they were carved from the stone in the first millennium bc. Uplistsikhe rises from the plain just a few kilometres from Gori, on what was once a key trade route from Byzantium to India and China. Now, like a giant sand sculpture half-erased by the waves, all that’s left are tantalizing indications of a highly developed city. Here’s a trace of the main avenue; that was the wine cellar; these pits were used for pagan rituals. A sharp-edged, 9th-century, three-church basilica stands at the top, dominating the organic swirls and hollows as rationally as stone and mortar can. It’s even higher than Queen Tamar’s Hall, an ample cave lower down that she never lived in.