Vardzia

Vardzia is a cave monastery complex carved into the volcanic cliffs of the Erusheti Mountain in southern Georgia, constructed primarily during the reign of Queen Tamar in the late 12th century as part of a defensive network against the threat of Seljuk and later Mongol invasions. At its height the complex is estimated to have contained around 6,000 individual rooms across more than a dozen levels, including a church, monks' cells, a throne room, bakeries, wine cellars, and an irrigation system, all connected by a network of tunnels designed to be defensible and largely invisible from outside — entrances were concealed, and the complex could reportedly house thousands of people along with their livestock during a siege.

In 1283, an earthquake struck the region and sheared away a significant portion of the cliff face in front of the complex, exposing the previously hidden interior rooms to the open air and destroying or damaging roughly two-thirds of the original structure — the rooms visible to visitors today represent only a fraction of what once existed, with the remainder either destroyed or still sealed within the rock. The complex's main church, the Church of the Dormition, survived the earthquake relatively intact and contains 12th-century frescoes including a portrait of Queen Tamar herself, one of the few surviving contemporary depictions of the queen, who was venerated in the Georgian Orthodox Church as a saint. Vardzia was largely abandoned after a series of further invasions in the following centuries, particularly the Persian invasion of 1551 during which much of the monastic community was reportedly killed, and the site was not significantly resettled until monks returned in the 1980s.