Uplistsikhe

Uplistsikhe is an ancient rock-hewn town in eastern Georgia, its name meaning the lord fortress, situated about 10 kilometers east of Gori on a high rocky bank of the Mtkvari River in the Shida Kartli region. Traces of habitation date back to the second millennium BC, with its earliest surviving structures from the first millennium AD, and it served as a major political and religious center of the ancient kingdom of Kartli. The town declined after Christianization in the fourth century, though its first Christian basilica was built there in the sixth century, and it later reemerged as a principal stronghold during the Muslim conquest of Tbilisi in the eighth to tenth centuries before Mongol raids in the fourteenth century left it largely abandoned. The site is notable for combining rock-cut architectural styles from Anatolia and Iran alongside surviving pagan and Christian structures.