The Jewish quarter and synagogues of Akhaltsikhe

Akhaltsikhe held one of the largest Jewish communities in Georgia. The town sat on the Ottoman frontier and lived by trade; Jewish merchants were established here from at least the 18th century, and after 1828, when Akhaltsikhe passed to the Russian empire, the community grew further.

The old quarter lies below the Rabati hill on the left bank of the Potskhovi: narrow streets, low houses of stone and brick with wooden balconies, courtyards that run into one another. Two synagogues stand a few dozen metres apart — the Great Synagogue, built in 1863, and a second of 1902. They are among the oldest surviving synagogue buildings in the country: thick-walled stone halls with arched windows, painted ceilings and carved wooden Torah arks inside.

The quarter was never exclusively Jewish. After the war of 1828-29 tens of thousands of Armenian refugees from Erzurum were resettled in Akhaltsikhe, permanently changing the town's demography, and Georgian, Armenian and Jewish neighbours lived along the same streets. That is why a synagogue, an Armenian church and a Georgian church all stand within a few blocks of each other.

The community began to leave in the 1970s and had almost entirely emigrated to Israel by the end of the 1990s. Only a handful of Jewish families remain in the town today. One synagogue is looked after and opens from time to time; the other is usually locked, and getting in depends on finding a neighbour or a caretaker with the key.

One thing is worth stating plainly. The restored Rabati castle also contains a building presented as a synagogue, but that is a modern reconstruction and part of the tourist complex. The real historical synagogues are down the hill on an ordinary residential street, with nothing to signpost them. That quietness, and the complete absence of presentation, is exactly what makes the walk worth taking.