Lailashi

Lailashi is the village where the whole history of Lechkhumi gathers on one hilltop. On a plateau at about 850 m above the Tskhenistskali and Lajanuri valleys, Georgians, Jews, Greeks and Armenians lived side by side for centuries — and the village was once Lechkhumi's main market town.

Its most famous relic is a 10th-century Torah manuscript, the "Lailashi Bible", now kept at the National Centre of Manuscripts in Tbilisi. Tradition says Jewish refugees settled here in the 16th century, arriving at night by moonlight — the name is often linked to the Hebrew "laila", night. A synagogue building still stands by the old bazaar site, and an old Jewish cemetery survives on the village edge, alongside an early 19th-century church with a bell tower and a damaged Armenian church. Bronze axes of the 14th–13th centuries BC found here are now in the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

Climb to the Okronishi spring, where a small pool built by Jewish villagers looks out over the whole Lajanuri reservoir valley. Below the village hides the mossy gorge with the famous "secret pool" — an emerald basin that has become the most-shared photograph in Lechkhumi in recent years. Come for the layers of history, stay for the silence and the views.