Surami Fortress

Surami sits on the hill from which you can see where Georgia divides in two. The Likhi range drops to the plain here, and for centuries this narrow gap was the only practical passage between eastern and western Georgia. Whoever held the hill held the trade and the armies that used it.

The core of the castle is 12th century, though a stronghold stood here much earlier. Most of what you walk through now — curtain walls, round bastions, the tall keep — went up between the 16th and 18th centuries, when Surami belonged to the Amilakhvari family. A restoration in the late 20th century put the silhouette back together, so the profile is complete while some of the stonework is visibly modern. Inside there is little but grass, stairs and towers; the reward is the view down the valley and over the railway that still climbs towards the pass.

The fortress is famous less for its architecture than for a story. Daniel Chonkadze's 1859 novella The Surami Fortress tells of walls that kept collapsing until a young man, Zurab, agreed to be immured alive in them. Sergei Parajanov and Dodo Abashidze filmed it in 1985, and the film carried the tale far beyond Georgia. For Georgian visitors the hill is read through that text.

Surami itself is a small pine-shaded town, a climatic resort in Soviet times with sanatoria for lung patients. Along the through-road, stalls sell nazuki — sweet spiced bread baked in a clay oven — which is what most Georgian drivers actually stop here for. In winter the hill is often under snow and the pass above disappears into cloud; in spring everything around it is green and the walls read most clearly.