Geguti Palace

Geguti is where the kings of Georgia lived when they were not building cathedrals. The ruins stand about seven kilometres south of Kutaisi on the flat Rioni plain: low brick walls in rough grass at the edge of the woods.

The oldest core is 8th or 9th century — a single room with a large fireplace. The main complex went up under George III (1156–1184) and was extraordinary in scale: a cruciform central hall carrying a dome fourteen metres across on squinches, set on a stone plinth three metres high. In all the building covered more than two thousand square metres. Further ranges and a palace church were added in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Queen Tamar used Geguti as a retreat, and in 1191 it became one of the focal points of the revolt mounted by supporters of her first husband, Yuri Bogolyubsky. The palace served mainly as a winter residence: the Rioni lowland is mild, and the surrounding forest was royal hunting ground.

To be honest about it: the dome is long gone. What survives is massive brickwork standing two or three metres high, the hearth recess, the springing of vaults and the outline of the plan. Glass information panels installed in 2016 carry drawings of the original building, and they are what make the scale intelligible.

Come if you are interested in the history of architecture, or if you are driving from Kutaisi to Tskaltubo and have half an hour. There is no fence, no ticket, and almost never another visitor.

The building technique deserves a look in its own right. Geguti is brick, not the dressed stone of Georgian churches, laid in thin courses with wide mortar beds. That was the language of palaces and bath houses rather than of religious architecture, and almost nothing of it survives elsewhere in Georgia. Brick also weathers faster than stone, so the ruin loses definition from decade to decade, which is part of why the glass panels were installed in 2016.