Vardzia is one of those places that seem straight out of a legend: an entire monastery-city dug by hand into a cliff face, in Georgia's remote south. In the 12th century, in the time of Queen Tamar, Georgians carved into the rock of Mount Erusheti a labyrinthine complex of hundreds of caves spread over thirteen floors, with churches, cells, refectories, wine cellars, storerooms, water channels, secret tunnels and a main church covered in medieval frescoes, which still preserves a famous portrait of Queen Tamar herself. A whole world hidden inside the mountain.
First conceived as a refuge-fortress where people could shelter from invasions, and later transformed into a large self-sufficient monastic city, Vardzia came to house thousands of people and became a spiritual and cultural centre of the Georgian kingdom in its golden age. A devastating earthquake in 1283 sheared off much of the hillside and left the caves 'open' to the outside, like an exposed beehive, giving it the striking look it has today. Despite the centuries, the looting and the abandonment, it is still an active monastery and one of the most revered sites in the country.
Visiting Vardzia means making your way through tunnels and stairways in the rock, peering out of caves over the precipice with the Kura valley below, and stepping into the dim light of the Church of the Dormition to see its frescoes, more than eight hundred years old. This guide helps you reach this remote corner, understand what you're looking at, find out how much admission costs, combine it with Rabati Fortress, Khertvisi and the other treasures of the south, and get ready for one of the most memorable and impressive visits in the whole Caucasus.
Vardzia was begun in the 12th century by King Giorgi III as a refuge-fortress where villagers could hide from invasions, and it was transformed and enlarged by his daughter, the legendary Queen Tamar (who reigned from 1184 to 1213), at the height of Georgia's 'golden age'. Under Tamar, Vardzia became a true city carved into the rock: hundreds of caves on thirteen levels, with churches, dwellings, workshops, qvevri wine cellars, water systems and tunnels, able to house thousands of people and serve as a monastery, fortress and cultural centre. In 1283, a strong earthquake brought down much of the outer hillside and left the caves exposed. Later it suffered invasions (Persian and Ottoman) and centuries of Ottoman rule, which left it almost deserted, until in the 20th and 21st centuries it became an active monastery and national monument again. Its history, tied to Tamar and the Georgian golden age, is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Georgia's west and deep south: Kutaisi, the old capital with Bagrati Cathedral and Gelati, the spa town of Borjomi and the cave city of Vardzia, carved out under Queen Tamar.
Read the history of Imereti and the south: caves and hot springs →They depart from Mtskheta, 130 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
An old Georgian legend says the name Vardzia came from the words of a little girl. The young Queen Tamar, still a small child, is said to have got lost while playing among the caves her father was having dug into the cliff, and when she heard people looking for her she called out from the rock: 'Ac var, dzia!', which in Georgian means 'Here I am, uncle!'. According to tradition, that phrase gave us the name Vardzia. It's only a legend, but it sums up the deep bond between this place and the figure who would make it immortal: Queen Tamar.
The real story begins with her father, King Giorgi III, who reigned from 1156 to 1184. It was he who, in the second half of the 12th century, ordered work to begin on carving Vardzia into the slopes of Mount Erusheti, above the valley of the Kura River, in the south of the kingdom. The original idea was practical and defensive: to create a hidden fortress-refuge inside the mountain, where the local population could shelter from the invasions that threatened Georgia's southern frontier, especially raids by the Seljuk Turks and other enemies from the south. It's estimated that the original complex could shelter tens of thousands of people.
That role as a secret fortress explains Vardzia's ingenious design: many of the caves were hidden inside the rock, with concealed entrances and internal tunnels, so that from outside you could barely tell there was a city tucked into the cliff. It was a refuge built to hold out, invisible and self-sufficient. But it was under Giorgi's daughter, Queen Tamar, that Vardzia stopped being just a refuge and became something much bigger.
To understand Vardzia you have to understand Tamar, the most famous and revered monarch in Georgian history. The daughter of Giorgi III, she ruled Georgia from 1184 to 1213, first alongside her father and then on her own, with such power and prestige that Georgians called her 'king' (mepe) Tamar rather than 'queen', to stress her full authority. Under her reign the Kingdom of Georgia reached the peak of its history: its greatest territorial extent, controlling much of the Caucasus, its greatest military strength and an extraordinary cultural flowering. It was the culmination of the Georgian 'golden age' begun by her great-grandfather David the Builder.
That era saw military triumphs such as the Battle of Basiani against the Seljuks, the expansion of the kingdom and an unrivalled artistic and intellectual splendour: in Tamar's time the poet Shota Rustaveli wrote 'The Knight in the Panther's Skin', Georgia's great national epic, dedicated to the queen herself. Tamar became a symbol of a powerful, Christian and cultured Georgia, and her figure took on an almost legendary aura; the Georgian Orthodox Church canonised her as a saint. She is still a central figure in national identity today.
It was Tamar who transformed Vardzia. Under her patronage, her father's fortress-refuge was enlarged and turned into a true monastic city: hundreds of new caves were carved out, the great Church of the Dormition was built with its frescoes, and the complex began to function as a monastery, a spiritual and cultural centre, and a symbol of the kingdom. Vardzia thus became forever tied to Queen Tamar, and it's no coincidence that the main church holds one of the few portraits of the monarch painted during her lifetime, where she appears beside her father as founder of the site.
At its height, in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, Vardzia was a genuine city carved into the rock, a marvel of medieval engineering. The complex stretched along half a kilometre of cliff and had up to thirteen levels of caves, with an astonishing number of rooms; sources speak of thousands of original chambers. It wasn't just a monastery: it was a complex, self-sufficient organism, able to support a large community indefinitely, even under siege.
It had everything needed for daily life: churches and chapels for worship, cells for the monks, living quarters, refectories and kitchens, bakeries with ovens, pharmacies and even rooms for treating the sick, forges and workshops, stables and, crucially, a huge system for storing and producing food. Hundreds of qvevri survive, the large buried clay jars in which Georgians have fermented wine for millennia, proof that Vardzia produced and stored wine on a large scale. Grain stores, cellars and pantries made it possible to hold out for long periods. An ingenious system of clay channels brought water from distant springs to different parts of the city, distributing it by gravity.
Since it was a fortress designed for defence, the whole complex was linked by tunnels and internal stairways, with secret passages and hidden exits, so its inhabitants could move around under cover and appear or vanish without being seen from outside. Vardzia combined the spiritual and the military, the monastic and the practical: a monastery-fortress-city that was at once a refuge for the kingdom, a centre of faith and a symbol of Tamar's power on Georgia's southern frontier.
Vardzia's fate changed dramatically in 1283, when a violent earthquake shook the region. The quake sheared off a large layer of the cliff's outer rock (it's estimated that much of the wall hiding the caves collapsed), leaving the complex exposed. That secret fortress, so cleverly hidden inside the mountain, was suddenly laid open to the valley, its rooms gaping over the void like the cells of a broken honeycomb. Paradoxically, it was this disaster that gave Vardzia the spectacular look we admire today, but it also ruined its defensive role and badly damaged the city.
The natural catastrophe was followed by hard centuries. Georgia's golden age had ended after Tamar's death and the devastating Mongol invasions of the 13th century, and the kingdom gradually fragmented and weakened. Vardzia, on the exposed southern frontier, bore the consequences. Although repairs were made and it remained an important monastery for a while, it grew ever more vulnerable. In 1551, during the wars between the Persian and Ottoman empires for control of the Caucasus, the troops of the Safavid shah Tahmasp I sacked the monastery, causing heavy damage and carrying off its treasures.
The final blow came with the Ottoman conquest. From the 16th century onwards this whole region of southern Georgia (Samtskhe) fell under Ottoman rule for centuries, and the Vardzia monastery was abandoned by its monks and left practically deserted and in ruins. For generations the caves served at most as an occasional shelter for shepherds, while the city carved by Tamar slept, silent and half-forgotten, in its southern cliff.
Vardzia's return to life began when this southern region came back into Georgian and Russian hands. In the early 19th century, with Georgia's annexation by the Russian Empire and the Russo-Turkish wars that took Samtskhe from the Ottomans, the area was once again under Christian administration. Through the 19th and 20th centuries interest in the monument kept growing: its caves and frescoes were studied, its huge historical and artistic value was recognised, and Vardzia came to be seen as one of the great treasures of Georgian heritage.
In the Soviet era Vardzia was declared a historical and architectural reserve and became a protected site and the subject of archaeological research, although religious worship was restricted. After Georgia's independence in 1991 and the revival of the Orthodox Church, the monastery regained its religious life: today Vardzia is once again an active monastery, with monks, and at the same time one of the most visited and revered monuments in the country. Georgia has nominated it for UNESCO World Heritage status, and it appears on the tentative list.
For today's traveller, Vardzia is far more than an archaeological curiosity: it's a living symbol of Georgian identity, of Queen Tamar's splendour and the country's golden age, and one of the most striking experiences the Caucasus has to offer. Walking its tunnels and stairways, looking out from the caves over the Kura valley and, in the half-light of the Church of the Dormition, gazing at Tamar's face painted more than eight hundred years ago brings you close to the heart of Georgia's history. Eight hundred years of refuge, prayer, earthquakes, plunder and silence, carved by hand into the rock of the south.
