Uplistsije is one of those places that seem impossible: an entire town carved into the bare rock of a hill above the Mtkvari River, continuously inhabited for more than three thousand years. Before Georgia was Christian, before Tbilisi or Mtskheta existed as we know them, thousands of people already lived here in a maze of caves, halls, pagan temples, streets and cisterns dug by hand into the stone. Walking through its empty rooms is a journey back to the Bronze Age.
At its peak, between the first millennium BCE and late Antiquity, Uplistsije was a major pagan religious centre —devoted to the worship of the sun and a mother goddess— and a trading hub on the routes linking East and West. It had a theatre, ceremonial halls, a great hall that tradition attributes to a queen, a pharmacy, a bakery and even a secret tunnel running down to the river to withstand sieges. With the arrival of Christianity it lost its sacred role, and the Mongols finished it off in the 13th century.
This guide helps you visit Uplistsije in a practical way: how to get there from Gori or Tbilisi, how much the ticket costs, why an audio guide is worth it, what to see among its caves —from the 'hall of Queen Tamar' to the Christian church on the summit— and how to protect yourself from the sun and the slippery rock. Together with Vardzia, it's the most impressive cave town in Georgia, and a time machine back to the country's most remote origins.
Uplistsije is one of the oldest settlements in Georgia: people began carving the rock in the early Bronze Age, more than three thousand years ago, and the town was continuously inhabited until the late Middle Ages. In the first millennium BC it was a powerful pagan religious centre and one of the largest towns in the kingdom of Kartli (Iberia), with thousands of inhabitants and a key role on the trade routes. When Mtskheta became Christian in the 4th century, Uplistsije, clinging to its pagan cults, kept its importance for a while as a stronghold of the old religion, until it too was Christianised. It enjoyed a second heyday in the 9th-10th centuries, when it served as a refuge for the Georgian kings during the Arab occupation of Tbilisi, and its summit church dates from that period. Its decline came with the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, which devastated it, and it has been deserted ever since. Today it's an extraordinary archaeological site, a candidate for World Heritage status, whose long history we cover on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The heart of Georgia: the capital of sulphur baths and wooden balconies, alongside Mtskheta, the old spiritual capital, and the age-old sites of the Mtkvari valley.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
There is something almost unreal about Uplistsikhe: an entire city that was not built but dug out, hollowed from the rock of a hill by hand, tool stroke by tool stroke, over centuries. On the left bank of the Mtkvari River, in the centre of present-day Georgia, people began carving caves, halls and streets into this soft volcanic rock in the early Bronze Age, more than three thousand years ago. The result was one of the oldest settlements in the country and in the whole Caucasus, continuously inhabited until the late Middle Ages.
The name Uplistsikhe means 'the lord's fortress' (from 'upali', lord, and 'tsikhe', fortress). It points to its defensive role and perhaps also to its sacred status. From very early on, the city was not just a place to live but a major religious centre. In pre-Christian Georgia, the peoples of the region worshipped the sun and a mother goddess, and Uplistsikhe became one of the main sanctuaries of those pagan cults, with temples carved into the stone that drew pilgrims from all over the region.
Throughout the first millennium BC, the city grew into one of the largest in the Kingdom of Kartli (Caucasian Iberia). It is estimated to have had thousands of inhabitants living in hundreds of rock-cut structures, far more than survive today, since erosion and collapses have taken a good part of them. These were spread over terraces climbing from the river to the top of the hill. It was a complete city, with homes, storerooms, workshops, cisterns, streets and large ceremonial halls.
At its height, between the first millennium BC and the first centuries AD, Uplistsikhe was much more than a cave city. It was a leading centre of religious, political and economic power. As a great pagan sanctuary, dedicated according to scholars to sun worship and a female deity, it enjoyed a prestige that attracted pilgrims and offerings, and an authority that rivalled other centres of the Kingdom of Kartli.
Its location was just as strategic. The hill rose beside the Mtkvari River, on the natural route linking eastern and western Georgia and, further afield, connecting the Persian world and the Caucasus with the lands of the Black Sea. The caravans of the great trade network joining East and West, the Silk Road, passed through here, and Uplistsikhe thrived as a waypoint, market and customs post. The wealth brought by trade added to the wealth drawn by the sanctuary.
Inside the city, this double life shows in the variety of its structures. There are large ceremonial halls such as the one tradition named 'Queen Tamar's hall', with a ceiling carved to imitate wooden beams. There are spaces interpreted as a pharmacy or apothecary, with niches for remedies, and a spot some have seen as a theatre. There are storage pits and cisterns for water and grain, and the ingenious secret tunnel that ran down to the river to secure supplies and an escape route during a siege. All of it, dug by hand into the rock, spoke of a large, organised and prosperous community.
The great turning point in Uplistsikhe's history came in the 4th century, when Saint Nino converted King Mirian of Iberia to Christianity and Georgia adopted the new faith as its official religion. While nearby Mtskheta, the capital of the kingdom, embraced Christianity and filled with churches, Uplistsikhe, the great pagan sanctuary, held out. For a time the rock city became a bastion of the old religion, a last stronghold of the sun cults against the advance of the Gospel.
This clash of two worlds, Christian Mtskheta and pagan Uplistsikhe, just a few dozen kilometres apart, is one of the most fascinating episodes of Georgian antiquity. Over time, though, Christianity won out here too, and the pagan temples were abandoned or converted. The city lost its original sacred role and, with it, much of its reason for being. But it did not disappear.
Uplistsikhe had a second boom between the 8th and 10th centuries, in dramatic circumstances. When the Arabs occupied Tbilisi and set up a Muslim emirate there, Georgia's Christian kings and nobles sought refuge in fortified places. The old rock city, defensible and remote, was repopulated and fortified again, serving as a stronghold for the Georgian rulers. From that period comes the brick-and-stone Christian church crowning the summit, the Prince's Basilica. Its outline stands out today against the pagan caves below and sums up, in a single image, the passage from one era to the next.
The end of Uplistsikhe as a living city came, as it did for so many other places in Georgia and Asia, with the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. The hordes that swept across the continent from the steppes also fell on the Caucasus, and the rock city, which had endured for millennia, was sacked and devastated. Its people were massacred or fled, and the site was left empty and in ruins.
There was also a deeper factor that sealed its decline. For centuries Uplistsikhe had prospered as a Silk Road hub, but trade and routes gradually shifted, and cities such as Tbilisi, better placed for the new era, drew in the country's economic and political life. The cave city, which had owed so much to its role as sanctuary and market, was left with neither. Earthquakes, frequent in the region, did the rest, bringing down many of its carved structures over the centuries.
And so a place that had been continuously inhabited for more than three thousand years was reduced to a cluster of empty, wind-battered caves above the river. Through the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, Uplistsikhe was little more than a curious relic of the past, a stone graveyard known to local shepherds and farmers but stripped of all importance. Only in modern times would its value be recognised again.
In the 19th and, above all, the 20th century, Uplistsikhe drew interest again, this time from archaeologists. Systematic excavations, stepped up in the Soviet era, revealed the size of the site and its great age, and produced a wealth of finds (pottery, tools, coins, jewellery) that today help reconstruct the life of the city across its three millennia of history. The functions of many halls were identified, the water and defence systems were studied, and the role Uplistsikhe had played as one of Georgia's first great urban centres became clear.
Recognition of its value led to its protection as a national monument and its inclusion on UNESCO's World Heritage Tentative List, as a candidate for full inscription, as an exceptional example of rock-cut architecture and of a city's evolution from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages. It was prepared for visitors, with a small museum at the entrance, and became one of the most visited archaeological sites in the country.
Today, walking through Uplistsikhe is a twofold experience: wonder at the engineering of a city hollowed out of the rock thousands of years ago, and reflection on the layers of history it holds, from pagan sun worship to Christianity, from commercial splendour to Mongol ruin. Together with distant Vardzia, it is the most impressive cave city in Georgia, and its closeness to Gori and Tbilisi makes it one of the most accessible and surprising visits for anyone who wants to touch the distant origins of this Caucasus country.
