- Where
- Upper Enguri valley
Greater Caucasus, northwest Georgia - Coordinates
- 42.9200° N
42.9000° E - Biome
- Subalpine forest and meadow
hornbeam, chestnut, spruce, fir - The towers
- Mostly 9th–13th century
typically 20–25 m tall - Ushguli
- Four villages, c. 200 residents
2,060–2,200 m - Status
- UNESCO World Heritage, 1996
- Best visited
- June–September; roads close in winter
Arrived on a bone-rattling road at a village of stone towers under a very large white mountain, and noticed after a while that there is not one tower but dozens, one beside each house. Was told what they were for and by whom, against whom, and it changed the look of the whole valley. Ate potato mashed with cheese until I could not stand up.
The short answer
Upper Svaneti occupies the upper reaches of the Enguri valley in the Greater Caucasus of northwestern Georgia, between the Caucasus and Svaneti ranges. Its villages are defined by the koshki — stone tower-houses of twenty to twenty-five metres, built mostly between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, though UNESCO records their origins as reaching back into prehistory. The village of Chazhashi in the Ushguli community alone preserves more than two hundred medieval tower houses, churches and castles. UNESCO inscribed Upper Svaneti in 1996. Mestia, at about 1,400 metres, is the regional centre; Ushguli, a community of four villages at around 2,100 metres, is the remote end of the road.
Why it's worth knowing
Defensive architecture is not unusual. Fortified villages exist across the mountain world, and they are almost always built against an outside threat — a raiding army, a rival kingdom, a slaving expedition.
What is unusual in Svaneti is the arithmetic. There is not one tower per village. There is roughly one tower per family, standing in the household plot, a few metres from the next family’s tower.
That tells you what the towers were for, and it was only partly invaders. Svaneti was known into the modern period for blood feuds — obligations of retaliation that passed between households and could run for generations. A family under feud needed somewhere to go, and going to the village fort would not help if the village was where the feud lived. So each household built its own.
The design follows from that. The lower two metres or so carry no door and no window. The entrance sits well above ground and was reached by a ladder, which came up behind you. Upper floors were for defence and for dropping things on people below. It is a building designed by people who expected the danger to already be inside the settlement.
And then the same isolation produced the opposite effect. Because Svaneti was never conquered — not by the invasions that repeatedly overran the Georgian lowlands, and not really by the Soviet Union either — icons, manuscripts and religious treasures were carried up here for safekeeping when the country was under threat. Many of them stayed. A number remain in private houses and village churches rather than in any museum.
So this is a landscape built out of mutual distrust that became, by virtue of being un-enterable, the place a nation kept its valuables. Both facts follow from the same mountains.
The field notes
How a koshki works
The tower is not a house. It stands beside the house — the machubi, a stone dwelling where the family and their livestock wintered under one roof — and it is used only when needed.
Four to five storeys, twenty to twenty-five metres, tapering slightly toward the top. Blind at the base. Floors connected by ladders that could be drawn up one by one, so a tower could be defended level by level as it was lost from below. Machicolations at the top for dropping stones. Small openings rather than windows.
They also served as avalanche refuge and as strongrooms — in a place with no banks, the safest thing in the village was a locked room five storeys up a stone shaft.
Counts of survivors vary and the disagreement is worth noting rather than smoothing: one account gives around 175 towers standing in Mestia alone, another around 175 across the whole of Svaneti. Most Svan families long ago moved into more comfortable modern housing, so the towers stand beside the buildings people actually live in.
Ushguli, and a contested superlative
Ushguli is a community of four villages — Zhibiani, Chvibiani, Chazhashi and Murkmeli — at the head of the Enguri valley, beneath Shkhara, Georgia’s highest mountain at 5,201 metres. Around two hundred people in some seventy families live there.
It is very commonly described as the highest permanently inhabited settlement in Europe. That claim does not survive close reading. The sources that make it mostly hedge — “reportedly”, “claims to be”, “on some accounts” — and Fodor’s describes it as the second-highest. Its own elevation is quoted between 2,060 and 2,200 metres depending on which of the four villages is measured, and where Europe ends in the Caucasus is itself a question with more than one answer.
What is not in dispute: it is among the highest year-round settlements in Europe, it is snowed in for months, and Chazhashi within it holds one of the densest concentrations of medieval tower architecture anywhere.
The walk from Mestia
The standard journey through Upper Svaneti is the trek from Mestia to Ushguli: four days, around 57 kilometres, over the Chkhunderi Pass at 2,719 metres and past the Adishi Glacier, sleeping in guesthouses in the villages along the way.
It has become one of the best-known treks in the Caucasus, and it is genuinely popular in season. Routes can be unmarked or ambiguous, mountain weather changes quickly, and a guide adds the villages as well as the navigation — guides are arranged through guesthouses in Mestia.
The road version is 47 to 50 kilometres depending on who measures it, unsealed for much of the way, and is described consistently and accurately as bone-rattling. Marshrutkas and hired jeeps make the trip; in winter it can close entirely.
A culture that stayed put
The Svans speak Svan, a language related to Georgian but not mutually intelligible with it, and unwritten. Polyphonic singing here is among the oldest documented in Georgia, which is saying something in a country whose polyphony is on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list.
The food is mountain food and worth going for on its own account: kubdari, bread baked around spiced meat, and tashmijabi, potato mashed with molten cheese until it becomes something structurally unlikely.
Christianity here sits over older practice rather than replacing it, and observances in the villages reflect both. This is the sort of statement that travel writing usually makes vaguely; in Svaneti it is documented, and visitors are asked to treat church interiors and their contents accordingly — some of what is in them has been there since it was carried up from a war.
On the blood feuds: they are history, not a current condition. Sources are consistent that the tradition is now a matter of record rather than practice, and Svaneti today is a tourism region with an airport, a ski station and guesthouses. The towers are what the feuds left behind.
- Walk from Mestia if you have four days. Take a guide.
- Stand at the foot of a tower and look for the door.
- Stay in a family guesthouse and accept the second helping.
- Go into a village church, quietly, and look at what is in it.
- Carry cash. There is nothing beyond Mestia that takes a card.
A ladder, and the space where it isn't. Stand at the foot of a koshki and look up: the first two metres are blank stone, and the doorway is above your head with nothing beneath it. Every tower in Svaneti is built around the assumption that at some point you will climb inside, pull the ladder up after you, and wait. The absence is the design.
Tally, in the marginBlank stone, and a doorway above your head with nothing underneath it. The absence is the whole design and I did not spot it for an hour.
Getting there
How to get there. Mestia is the gateway. By road it is roughly five hours from Batumi and around ten from Tbilisi, and the mountain sections are slow, narrow and exposed — most visitors take a marshrutka or hire a driver rather than self-drive, and a local driver is worth the difference. There are also short flights from Tbilisi and Kutaisi into Mestia’s small airport, weather permitting, which it often does not.
From Mestia to Ushguli is 47 to 50 km of largely unsealed mountain road, three hours or so by shared jeep, and the standard way to do it is to arrange a vehicle through a guesthouse. Do not attempt it in an ordinary hire car.
The trek — Mestia to Ushguli, four days, around 57 km — is the better way if you have the time and the legs. Guesthouses along the route provide beds and dinner. Book nothing more than a couple of days ahead in weather this changeable, and take a guide unless you are confident with unmarked ground.
When to go. June to September. Snow closes the high road for much of the year and the pass is impassable outside summer. Late summer gives the most reliable weather; the meadows are at their best in June and July.
Staying. Family guesthouses, in Mestia and in the villages, are the accommodation and much of the point. Meals are usually included and generous.
What to bring. Cash — ATMs exist in Mestia and effectively nowhere beyond it. Layers, because 2,100 metres in the Caucasus is cold at night in any month. And a willingness to be fed considerably more than you intended to eat.
Mark this place
Common questions
What are Svan towers?
Stone tower-houses, called koshki, built across Upper Svaneti mostly between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, typically twenty to twenty-five metres tall. They have no door or window for the first two metres or so; the entrance was reached by a ladder that could be pulled up behind you, and internal ladders between floors could be withdrawn as well, so a tower could be defended level by level.
Why did every family in Svaneti need its own tower?
Because the threat was often internal. Svaneti was known into the modern period for blood feuds — obligations of retaliation passing between households and running for generations — so a communal fort was of limited use if the danger lived in the same village. The towers also served against invaders, as avalanche refuge, and as strongrooms.
Is Ushguli the highest village in Europe?
The claim is very widely repeated and not well established. Sources that make it usually hedge, and Fodor’s describes Ushguli as the second-highest permanently settled village in Europe. Its elevation is quoted between 2,060 and 2,200 metres depending on which of its four villages is measured, and where Europe ends in the Caucasus is itself disputed. It is safely among the highest year-round settlements in Europe.
How many Svan towers survive?
Accounts differ in a way worth noting: one gives around 175 surviving towers in Mestia alone, another around 175 across the whole of Svaneti. What is consistent is that the village of Chazhashi, within the Ushguli community, preserves more than two hundred medieval tower houses, churches and castles — the densest surviving concentration.
Why are religious treasures kept in Svaneti?
Because it was never conquered. During the invasions that repeatedly overran lowland Georgia, icons, manuscripts and religious objects were carried up into these valleys for safekeeping, and many stayed. A number remain in village churches and private houses rather than in museums — which is why visitors are asked to treat church interiors with particular care.
How do you get from Mestia to Ushguli?
By road it is 47 to 50 km of largely unsealed mountain track, about three hours by shared jeep arranged through a guesthouse, and not suitable for an ordinary hire car. On foot it is the four-day Mestia–Ushguli trek, around 57 km, crossing the Chkhunderi Pass at 2,719 metres and passing the Adishi Glacier, with guesthouses along the way.
When is the best time to visit Upper Svaneti?
June to September. Snow closes the high road for much of the year and the trekking pass is impassable outside summer. Late summer offers the most reliable weather; June and July are best for the alpine meadows. Mestia also operates as a ski destination in winter, but Ushguli and the trek are summer propositions.
Are blood feuds still a danger in Svaneti?
No. The tradition is consistently described in current sources as a matter of historical record rather than present reality. Svaneti today is a tourism region with an airport, a ski station and a network of family guesthouses. The towers are what the feuds left behind.