Svan Towers of Mestia

The Svan tower is the defensive structure characteristic of Svaneti, usually 20–25 metres high with four or five, rarely six, storeys. The lowest storey, whose walls are up to 1.5 metres thick, is mostly blind, and the entrance is set at the level of the second floor; the tower narrows with height and the walls thin to 0.7–0.8 metres, which gives it the outline of a truncated pyramid. Inside, the storeys are linked by movable wooden ladders, and the hatches between them are set in opposite corners so that an attacker could not climb straight through; every storey has narrow loopholes, and the top storey carries the battle platform with its crown of projecting arched machicolations, from which the defenders threw projectiles, under a gabled wooden roof. The towers were built of cobbles and boulders, in the Ushguli community also of slate, and plastered outside with a mortar of rare hardness. A tower is either attached to a dwelling, the murkvami or tower house, or stands alone; the house joined to it covers 80–130 square metres, its ground floor, the machubi, a single hall with a hearth where people and livestock lived together in spaces divided by carved wooden partitions, and its upper floor, the darbazi, the summer quarters and store, from which the tower was entered. In war the tower was the family's refuge, in an avalanche an emergency exit from the house, and in peace a food store and a watch post.

Some 3,500 towers survive in Svaneti, mostly built in the ninth to twelfth centuries, Georgia's golden age, though the type is older and individual towers are dated from the eighth to the eighteenth century. In Mestia the towers shape the look of the town; some are open to visitors for a small fee, while many are closed and serve as stores. Many towers today are ruined or gone; Chazhashi in Ushguli, with more than 200 towers and tower houses, is a museum reserve, and a reconstruction of a Svan tower stands in the ethnographic museum in Tbilisi.

The origins of the Svan towers probably go back to prehistory, but most of the towers standing today were built in the ninth to twelfth centuries, the golden age of the united Georgian kingdom, when the communities of free Svaneti raised their family tower houses against frequent raids and avalanches. In 1996 Chazhashi in Ushguli and the medieval character of Upper Svaneti were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and in 2011 the Svan tower won the "vernacular architecture" prize at the International Award for Architecture in Stone.

Many towers have fallen into disrepair or become storehouses. A modern reconstruction of a Svan tower was built at the ethnographic museum in Tbilisi above Turtle Lake.

The towers can be seen from the streets of Mestia. Some can be entered for a small fee; check locally which towers are open.