Uplistsikhe
Uplistsikhe ( Georgian უფლისციხე ) is a fortress and cave city in Georgia .
geography
It is located in the Inner Kartlien administrative region , ten kilometers from Gori , on a rocky plateau on the Kura River .
history
Events
People already settled on the plateau in the Bronze Age . The fortress city was founded in the 6th century BC. Founded in BC and developed into a trading center on the Silk Road with around 5,000 inhabitants. The oldest written record that has been preserved comes from the 1st century. Attempts to conquer Uplistsikhe failed again and again; it was not until the 13th century that the Mongol ruler Ögedei Khan succeeded in taking and destroying the city.
buildings
Uplistsikhe had mighty fortifications. The princely church from the 10th century rises on the highest point , the interior of which is painted with frescoes. The largest building in the complex is Tamaris Darbasi (also called "Tamaras Hall"), a large rock hall with two huge columns and gallery-like access to ancillary rooms.
The houses are carved out of the "soft" rock, have columns and vaulted ceilings. Some of these dwellings are provided with a ceiling that shows imitated beams of a supposed wooden roof and right-angled beams. Another group of cave rooms has wall surfaces with regularly arranged octagonal and square depressions from their access area. This entrance was originally decorated with a gable. These structures are dated to the 3rd century and interpreted as architectural quotations from Roman architecture.
Tamara's Hall
Cave opening with fragment of the pediment
Ceiling design of a sub-area
Ceiling design
There was an amphitheater , a pharmacy , a bakery , warehouses, a prison and a market . Archaeologists discovered places where animals were sacrificed.
Uplistsikhe had a sewerage system made up of drainage channels and water channels. A tunnel dug into the rock wall, which originally served to dispose of water for the inhabitants in the valley of the Kura, is now the access to the plateau.
UNESCO application
The cultural monument was registered by Georgia in 1993 for the list of UNESCO World Heritage . Since 2004 Uplistsikhe has been restored with funds from a cultural heritage project of the World Bank and the Georgian government. Concrete pillars were drawn into individual buildings for structural security .
Today's place
The village of Uplistsikhe has a train station on the Poti – Baku railway line .
Web links
- UNESCO: Uplistsikhe Cave Town. on whc.unesco.org (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Uplistsikhe . In: Nodar Janberidze, Irakli Tsitsishwili: Architectural Monuments of Georgia . Strojizdat, Moscow 1996, pp. 23-26 ISBN 5-274-02223-5
Coordinates: 41 ° 58 ′ 0.6 ″ N , 44 ° 12 ′ 26.6 ″ E