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Tours To Vardzia Cave City

Tours To Vardzia Cave City

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Georgia, Tbilisi
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Tours To Vardzia Cave City


Vardzia (12th-13th cc. rock-cut monastery) is important because of its unique natural conditions contributing to the specific microclimate and landscape, historical background and diversity of cultural heritage.

It has an over eight hundred year history . In 1185 Tamar became a queen of Georgia. However, this evidence was a first for the country and particularly unusual in the Europe of the twelfth century. She wished to build a monastery in order to protect her country from Mongols. That's why a Queen decided to have her monastery carved from solid rocks. Altogether, 13 levels were constructed with natural caves being enlarged to contain over 6,000 dwelling places for monks and for those fleeing invaders. The only way to get to this underground kingdom was passing through a secret tunnel which started at the nearby Mtkvari river.
The city escaped the Mongols triumphantly. Yet less than a hundred years after its construction, the great earthquake of 1283 ruined the country. It was so powerful that it ruptured the cave system, causing much of it to collapse and cascade down the side of the Erusheli Mountain.

It 1551 Vardzia was finally abandoned. Yet in the twentieth century the monastery was revisited by monks who decided to guard its history and a small group remains there to this day. It is more of a museum now than a monastery.

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Tours To Vardzia Cave City
Tours To Vardzia Cave City
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