Upper Svaneti is a mountainous region in the Caucasus with charming medieval villages. Many of these villages have distinctive tower-houses - the village of Chazhashi, for example, still has as many as two hundred such towers, which were built as defense posts to watch for approaching invaders.
The Svanetian towers were erected between the 9th and 12th centuries. Although today they stand only for their touristic and aesthetic value, at the time they were built, the towers were used to watch for marauders. The Mongols, which conquered much of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, however did not reach Svanetia.
Upper Svaneti was inscribed as a World Heritage Site during the 20th session of the World Heritage Committee in Merida, Mexico, on 2-7 December, 1996.
Svaneti village in northern Georgia, with a medieval tower
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Svan_towers_in_Ushguli.JPG Author: İhsan Deniz Kılıçoğlu
Svanetian towers in a village in Upper Svaneti
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1856.jpg Author: ilan molcho
Village of Murymeli, which is part of Ushguli in Mestia, Upper Svaneti
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Murymeli.JPG Author: გრიგოლ
Location: N 42 54 59 E 43 00 41 in the village of Chajashi, Mestia district, in the region of Samegrelo-Zemo Svateni, Georgia.
Inscription Year: 1996
Type of Site: Cultural
Inscription Criteria: IV, V
Visiting Upper Svaneti
It is best to engage a tour operator in Tbilisi in order to visit the small villages of the Upper Svaneti. Alternatively, you might want to consider hiring a jeep or Marschrutka to take you there. A trip from Tbilisi to Mestia takes about 12 hours.
Let me take you to explore and discover Penang through my series of walking tours on YouTube. You may use these videos as your virtual tour guide. At the beginning of each video, I provide the starting point coordinates which you may key into your GPS, Google Maps or Waze, to be navigated to where I start the walk, and use the video as your virtual tour guide.
Disclaimer
Please use the information on this page as guidance only. The author endeavours to update the information on this page from time to time, but regrets any inaccuracies if there be any.
Hello and thanks for reading this page. My name is Timothy and my hobby is in describing places so that I can share the information with the general public. My website has become the go to site for a lot of people including students, teachers, journalists, etc. whenever they seek information on places, particularly those in Malaysia and Singapore. I have been doing this since 5 January 2003, for over twenty years already. You can read about me at Discover Timothy. By now I have compiled information on thousands of places, mostly in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and I continue to add more almost every day. My goal is to describe every street in every town in Malaysia and Singapore.