# Sukhumi Fortress
- URL: https://explore-georgia.ge/en/places/sukhumi-fortress
- Type: place to visit
- Region: Abkhazia

The Sukhumi fortress stands on the city's seafront, where the Dioskurov embankment passes into the Makhajirov embankment; Voronov Street and Abazin Street lead to it. It belongs to the city of Sokhumi and Sokhumi Municipality. This is the site of ancient Dioscurias and Roman Sebastopolis: most of the ruins of the old city now lie on the bed of Sukhumi Bay, the shore having subsided and the sea advanced.

The fortress is a large structure whose southern part the sea has taken; the courtyard covers about 1,200 square metres, and the plan is elongated from east to west. Towers stood at the corners, of which the two northern ones are the better preserved; in later years the restaurant "Dioskuria" was built on top of the south-western tower, and the fourth tower can hardly be made out. In 1956, during the building of the embankment, the seaward wall was blown up, and the seafront boulevard now divides the monument into a northern and a southern part. The walls are of rubble stone in lime mortar. A nineteenth-century description shows the fortress as a regular square with a high, thick wall and two gates, east and west.

At the end of the nineteenth century, in 1892, Vladimir Chernyavsky found a slab in the wall carrying an inscription naming the Roman writer and official Flavius Arrian, who inspected the fort and its garrison in the 130s on the orders of Emperor Hadrian. The walls are in poor condition and in urgent need of conservation.

## History

The Romans built the fort on the site of ancient Dioscurias, founded by Milesian Greeks in the sixth century BC; the Roman coastal fort of Sebastopolis took shape in the second century AD, though some scholars place a Roman garrison here from the second half of the first century BC. Urban life flourished in the second half of the second century and faded in the fourth and fifth. In the first half of the sixth century, during the war between Persia and Byzantium, the walls were destroyed and were rebuilt under Emperor Justinian; in the eleventh to fifteenth centuries the fortress was rebuilt again.

In 1578 the Ottomans took the city and built the fortress anew, digging stone-lined moats filled with water along the walls; the fortress was named Sukhum-Kale. At the end of the eighteenth century it was the residence of Kelesh-bey Shervashidze, prince of Abkhazia, who was killed on 2 May 1808. In July 1810 a Russian landing force stormed the fortress after a long bombardment and installed a Russian garrison. In the 1830s the garrison consisted of two infantry companies, and the fortress was ringed by malarial marshes, which began to be drained in the early 1840s on the initiative of General Raevsky.

During the Abkhazian uprising of 1866 the rebels occupied Sukhumi on 28 July, and the garrison shut inside the fortress was saved only by a relief force; the leaders of the uprising were shot at the fortress wall in December of that year. In the war of 1877–1878 the Ottomans plundered the city and carried off from the fortress an ornamented marble fountain that still stands in the courtyard of the Topkapı palace in Istanbul. After the war the fortress became a prison, where political prisoners were held during the revolution of 1905–1907; it served the same purpose in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

## Visit info

The remains of the fortress are on the Sukhumi seafront and are reached on foot; the nearest stop is "Banya". Check the terms of access locally.

Abkhazia is an occupied territory. Under Georgian law entry to the region is lawful only through the Enguri crossing; entry from Russia is a breach of Georgian law. Check the current conditions of movement before travelling.

## Tips

The two northern towers are the best preserved. Most of the finds made along the Sukhumi shore, amphorae, coins and gravestones among them, are kept in the Sukhumi history museum. The fortress combines in one day with the botanical garden and the Besleti bridge.

## Safety

The walls are unsafe: climbing them or standing beneath them is dangerous, as stone falls. On the seaward side the structure is washed by the waves; do not approach the sea wall in a storm. Consular assistance in the occupied territory is limited.

## Sources

- [Dioscurias fortress — Georgian Wikipedia](https://ka.wikipedia.org/wiki/დიოსკურიის_ციხე)
- [Sukhumi fortress — Russian Wikipedia](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Сухумская_крепость)
- [Dioscurias — Georgian Wikipedia](https://ka.wikipedia.org/wiki/დიოსკურია)
- [Dioscurias — Russian Wikipedia](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Диоскуриада)
- [Sukhumi fortress — Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q65292046)

## This page in other languages

- [ქართული](https://explore-georgia.ge/ka/adgilebi/sokhumis-tsikhe)
- [Русский](https://explore-georgia.ge/ru/mesta/sukhumskaia-krepost)