# Tmogvi Fortress
- URL: https://explore-georgia.ge/en/places/tmogvi-fortress
- Type: place to visit
- Region: Samtskhe-Javakheti
- Coordinates: 41.394567, 43.3148

Tmogvi Fortress stands in historical Javakheti, on the left bank of the Mtkvari, on a high and hard-to-reach rocky mountain. The river protects it on two sides and deep ravines on the others, and the narrow passages leading into the fortress were guarded by walls. The fortress spreads over three hills, which a wall 150 metres long and 3 metres thick joins and encloses, adding to the natural defence of the cliffs. Several towers stood on each hill. Because of the terrain the walls rise at different heights. The western part is the best preserved: here the wall climbs the sloping rock in three steps, with buttressed walls. On the south-east the wall abutted a cave which a secret tunnel cut in the rock linked with the citadel above and with the Mtkvari below, so the fortress had water even under siege. Inside the walls two reservoirs also gathered water.

At the heart of the fortress a small area was entirely built up. A rectangular building of dressed tuff blocks on a basalt plinth, with a gabled roof, was apparently a church. Two main layers can be told apart in the masonry: the oldest is built of even courses of dressed tuff blocks, while the walls of roughly worked rubble stone belong to a later rebuilding. Outside the walls, to the west, in a ravine, the church of Saint Ephrem is cut into the rock, with a chancel screen also carved from the rock, and in the ruins of a second, domed church fragments of thirteenth-century wall painting survive. The ruins of the town spread far down the slope from the south-eastern walls.

On both banks of the Mtkvari are deserted villages and the ruins of palaces. The palace on the left bank belongs to the oldest building layer, while the one on the right bank is later and dates from the middle of the fourteenth century: a bathhouse and three other buildings can be made out there. The bathhouse, built of Georgian brick and stone, has three rooms; its vaults have fallen, but the corner squinches are still clear. Two roads passed by the palace: a path from Tsunda ran on towards Vanis Kvabebi and Vardzia, and a second road, for traffic, went down into the gorge to a bridge. Remains of bridge piers survive on the Mtkvari: one bridge linked the palaces, and the other carried traffic. A field of burial mounds of the third–second millennium BC has also been found near the fortress.

## History

By one explanation the name Tmogvi comes from the Armenian word mog (pagan priest, magus); in Armenian the fortress is called Tmkaberd. Tmogvi is first mentioned in sources of the ninth or tenth century. It controlled the road that entered Georgia from the Near East through the Mtkvari gorge, and it rose to importance after the neighbouring town of Tsunda declined in the ninth–tenth centuries. According to an eleventh-century Georgian historian, in 914 the Arab commander Abul-Kasim (Yusuf ibn Abi'l-Saj) laid waste eastern Georgia and Samtskhe-Javakheti and came to Tmogvi as well, but did not take the fortress. In the first half of the tenth century Tmogvi and much of Javakheti were probably held by the descendants of Adarnase, son of Ashot the Kurapalates; at the end of the century it was first in the hands of the kings of Abkhazia and then became a royal fortress. In 1011–1012 King Bagrat III imprisoned the kings of Klarjeti, Sumbat and Gurgen, here.

The first Tmogveli was Parsman. In 1044–1045 he sided with Liparit, eristavt-eristavi of Kldekari, against King Bagrat IV and was defeated with him, but the king and the eristavis were reconciled. Parsman also held Akhalkalaki; in 1065, during the Seljuk invasion, he fought heroically in the battle of Akhalkalaki, and for this he was commemorated in the agape of the Iviron monastery on Mount Athos. From 1073 King Giorgi II granted Tmogvi to the rebellious noble Niania Kuabulisdze, whose family perished in the earthquake of 1089. After 1177 Giorgi III granted Tmogvi to Apridon, whom he had raised to the office of msakhurtukhutsesi, and after Tamar came to the throne, about 1186–1187, Apridon was brought down with other upstarts. The new lord of Tmogvi was the commander-in-chief Gamrekeli-Toreli, and the importance of the fortress grew further. In 1191, after Gamrekeli's death, Tmogvi passed to a branch of the Mkhargrdzeli, the Tmogveli. The writer Sargis Tmogveli came from this family. From 1204 Vanis Kvabebi became the family burial place of the Tmogveli.

The earthquake of 1283 destroyed both Tmogvi and Vanis Kvabebi; the Tmogveli still appear at Tmogvi in the fourteenth century, but later they left it. The earthquake of 1319 destroyed Tmogvi again; by one account it was rebuilt by the architect Theodore, and a building inscription of 1350 survives on the wall of the fortress. In the sixteenth century Tmogvi was in the hands of the atabag Ivane, and later it was held now by the Rcheulashvili, now by the Amatakishvili. In 1576–1578 the struggle of the nobles of Meskheti against the atabag, led by Shalikashvili, turned into fierce fighting around Tmogvi; Tmogvi was Shalikashvili's main stronghold, and the atabag Manuchar sacked the town and took the fortress. In 1578, when the Ottomans entered Samtskhe, Manuchar handed Tmogvi to Lala Pasha, and it became part of the liva of Akhalkalaki. In the eighteenth century the population declined; in the words of Vakhushti, "Tmogvi was a city, but now it is a small town". In 1829, by the Treaty of Adrianople, the Ottoman Empire ceded Tmogvi together with other Georgian lands, and it passed to the Russian Empire. In 1902 the Armenian poet Hovhannes Tumanyan wrote the poem The Capture of Tmkaberd, on which Alexander Spendiaryan based his opera Almast in 1928, to a libretto by Sophia Parnok. An Armenian legend tells that the prince who held the castle beat off every assault until a Persian shah seduced his wife: she poisoned her husband, made his army drunk and opened the gates to the enemy.

## Visit info

The fortress stands by the village of Tmogvi, on the left bank of the Mtkvari. The Khertvisi–Vardzia road passes below it, about 4 kilometres before Vardzia; from Aspindza to that point is about 25 kilometres by road, and Vanis Kvabebi is about 2 kilometres away. The fortress stands on a high, hard-to-reach rocky mountain, so check the path up and its condition locally.

## Tips

The best-preserved part of the fortress is the western one, where the wall climbs the rock in three steps. Outside the walls, in the western ravine, look for the rock-cut church of Saint Ephrem. Tmogvi combines well with a visit to Vanis Kvabebi and Vardzia, which a single road linked in the Middle Ages.

## Safety

The fortress is in ruins and stands on a steep cliff: move carefully over the ruins and near the edges of the walls, and hold children by the hand. For the climb wear shoes with a good grip and take water; the rock is slippery after rain.

## Sources

- [Tmogvi Fortress — Georgian Wikipedia](https://ka.wikipedia.org/wiki/თმოგვის_ციხე)
- [Tmogvi — English Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmogvi)
- [Tmogvi Fortress — Russian Wikipedia](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Тмогви_%28крепость%29)
- [Tmogvi Fortress — Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3646287)

## This page in other languages

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