Goris-Tsikhe
Encyclopedia
Gori Fortress is a medieval citadel
Citadel
A citadel is a fortress for protecting a town, sometimes incorporating a castle. The term derives from the same Latin root as the word "city", civis, meaning citizen....

 in Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

, standing above the city of Gori
Gori, Georgia
Gori is a city in eastern Georgia, which serves as the regional capital of Shida Kartli and the centre of the homonymous administrative district. The name is from Georgian gora , that is, "heap", or "hill"...

 on a rocky hill.

The fortress first appears in the 13th century records but archaeological evidence shows that the area had already been fortified in the last centuries BC. The fortress controlled major strategic and economic routes and accommodated a large garrison. In the 16th century the Ottomans
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 captured it to overawe Tbilisi
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...

, and then it continually changed hands between the Turks, the Georgians, and the Persians. The citadel acquired the present-day form under the Georgian kings Rostom of Kartli
Rostom of Kartli
Rostom or Rustam Khan was a ruler of Kartli, eastern Georgia, from 1633 until his death. Appointed by a Persian shah as a Wāli of Kartli, he styled himself king of kings and sovereign.- Life :...

 in the 1630s and Erekle II
Erekle II
Erekle II was a Georgian monarch of the Bagrationi Dynasty, reigning as the king of Kakheti from 1744 to 1762, and of Kartli and Kakheti from 1762 until 1798. In the contemporary Persian sources he is referred to as Erekli Khan, while Russians knew him as Irakli...

 in 1774. After the Russian
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 annexation of Georgia in 1801, the fortress was garrisoned by a Russian grenadier battalion, but its importance gradually declined and the fortifications went defunct. The British Encyclopaedia Metropolitana
Encyclopaedia Metropolitana
The Encyclopædia Metropolitana was an encyclopedic work published in London, from 1817 to 1845, by part publication. In all it came to quarto, 30 vols., having been issued in 59 parts .-Origins:...

reported in 1845:
Gori Fortress was significantly damaged by the earthquake in 1920
1920 Gori earthquake
The Gori earthquake with the surface wave magnitude of 6.2 hit the town of Gori and its district, the Democratic Republic of Georgia, on February 20, 1920, inflicted heavy damage to the area and causing 114 deaths....

. The best preserved structure is Tskhra-kara (“the Nine-gated”), which looks to the west, and is adjoined by the supplementary walls on the south and east.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK