The changing architecture of Tusheti mountain villages in northern Georgia

Stefan Applis

Tusheti is a historic region in the Caucasus. To the north,t is separated from the Republic of Chechnya within the Russian Federation by a mighty mountain range. To the west, another mountain range separates it from the neighbouring Georgian regions Pshavi and Khevsureti. Since the Tusheti region became a UNESCO biosphere reserve, tourism has been steadily increasing.

Due to its remote location, traditional architecture has been preserved there largely unchanged.^[i] This architecture reflects the changing regional security situation at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, brought about by the gradual incorporation of the North Caucasus into the Russian Empire. Using the example of the high-mountain architecture of the villages of Tusheti, the following article provides an explanation of the associated settlement structures and illustrates that one can clearly trace the evolution of regional security regimes through text, drawings and photographs.

Fig 1: Watchtower on the border with Chechnya and Khevsureti (Applis 2024)

Despite strong economic and social ties between Tusheti and the neighbouring regions of Chechnya and Dagestan, raids by neighbouring groups were always a reality of life for the inhabitants of Tusheti. The increasing insecurity of life in the border region eventually prompted the mountain dwellers of Tusheti to seek protection from the Russian Empire. This came at a price: they were required to contribute men to the Russian military effort. In the neighbouring regions, resistance waged as a 'holy war' against a colonial power that also sought to spread Russian-style Orthodox Christianity.^[ii] This resistance was particularly fierce in the Islamic regions of Dagestan, Chechnya, and Circassia. Under the political and religious leadership of Sheikh Shamil (1797–1871) — a landowner's son who rose to become one of the most formidable opponents of Russian expansion — the uprising transformed into a 'holy war' that took Russia a full decade to suppress. Only after the end of the Crimean War in 1856 was the Tsarist Empire able to dispatch sufficient troops to the Caucasus to establish its military superiority. To do so, it incorporated local forces into its ranks — among them commandos from Tusheti, who now found themselves fighting in a war that Russian protection had drawn them into.

Records from the 19th century mention epidemics and landslides, which led many Tushetians to leave their mountain villages and move to the lowlands of Georgia^[iii]. In 1878, Tusheti's highlands were permanently inhabited by about 5,200 people, dropping to 4,320 in 1929, shortly after the Sovietization of Georgia. By 1939, the population had further declined to 1,855 and two years later to only 810. Following the forced resettlement of the Tushetians to the Georgian lowlands in the 1950s, almost all Tushetians lived in newly established settlements on the southern edge of the high mountains.^[iv]

Fig. 2: Upper Omalo with its former castle and fortified towers (summer settlement) and Lower Omalo with its unfortified dwellings and winter stables (Applis 2024)

A thorough exploration of local architecture and the associated ways of life and work did not begin until the Soviet era.  Georgian architect Sergi Makalatia's 1933 book Tusheti Folk Traditions included architectural drawings by Ucha Japaridze, Rene Schmerling, and Davit Zizishvili^[v]. Building on earlier expeditions to Tusheti, Longinoz Sumbadze has been conducting a comprehensive survey of residential buildings since the 1960s. His son Nodar Sumbadse supported him through photographs and drawings.^[vi] These works are the result of the Soviet Union’s well-known interest in local ethnographies, which were intended to strengthen ethnic groups’ awareness of their regional identities under the policy known as the union of peoples.

In pre-modern Tusheti, settlements were traditionally located on mountainsides along the steep valleys of deep, narrow rivers. They were situated at the altitude that marks the limit for the spread of cultivated plants. The combination of mountain agriculture and rotational grazing dictated the layout and architecture of villages. Until the region was largely pacified by Russian military in the 19th century, each settlement typically consisted of two parts: a primary fortified village with defence towers and fortresses, and a secondary winter settlement called boseli which housed people as well as livestock that was previously kept in the mountains on a permanent base. This winter settlement was not designed for the defence against enemies because snow-covered passes prevented raids.^[vii]

The Omalo settlement, made up of Upper and Lower Omalo, can be viewed as a prototype. The two parts of the settlement are close to one another, but the difference in altitude has consequences for farming and horticulture opportunities throughout the year.

Fig. 3: Upper Omalo around 1901, still retaining its fortress-like character at that time (fortress towers and fortified houses within the settlement; the defensive walls of the castle, intended as a last refuge, are already missing); illustration by Gottfried Merzacher (Merzbacher 1904).

Most fortified Tusheti summer settlements were built on avalanche-proof, sun-exposed, rocky slopes which made it easier to defend them during attacks. The old Tusheti villages were constructed in compact ways, offering facilities to protect women and children inside five to six-storey buildings. Their roofs came in two shapes: a stepped pyramid structure (sipediani) made of stone (in the Pirikiti Valley) and a flat, one-sided roof made of wood (in the valleys of Chagma, Gometsari and Tsovata). Inside the towers, the first floor, which was narrow and only accessible from above, was often designed to keep captives. Children and women could hide on the middle floors; the higher floors, designed for defence activities, were equipped with embrasures (satopuri). The top floor had a type of stone canopy (salode) from which stones could be thrown onto enemies. Frequently, these defence structures were surrounded by high walls.  The Omalo, Indurta, and Diklo fortress buildings all had high walls of which some ruins remain. Like all buildings in Tusheti, they were made of layered clay slate, usually without mortar. Due to the cold winters, walls were plastered with lime on the inside and animals were housed on the ground floor, so that their body heat would warm the structure. Windows were kept narrow, both because of low temperatures and for defence purposes. It was designed in a way that each such rectangular house, the sole kind of building in Tusheti before the middle of the 19^th century, could serve as a real fortress. These fortress houses usually had small openings for light (sarkmeli) and for smoke extraction (sakwamle).^[viii]

Fig. 4: Today’s Upper Omalo consists, in terms of its historical architecture, almost exclusively of buildings with balconies that were constructed following the region’s incorporation into the Tsarist Empire; the fortified character was no longer necessary due to the securing of the borders. (Applis 2024)

Fig. 5a and 5b: Drawing of side views and a floor plan of a fortress house in Kvavlo (Applis 2024, after Sumbadze 1963).

From the middle to the end of the nineteenth century, under Russian rule, a kind of transitional house developed. These buildings featured wooden galleries or balconies, multiple rooms and two or three stories. Architect Longinoz Sumbadze uses the term 'transitional house' for two types of buildings. First, he applies it to fortress houses which were created by adding extensions like balconies and large windows during a time when extended family communities dissolved and peaceful relations removed the need for defence structures. Secondly, he uses it to refer to new, almost square buildings, constructed similarly to the traditional fortress houses. These were still built of layered slate but with broader window openings. According to Sumbadze, the most significant difference between them and the fortress houses was that these buildings had a real attic, which was not used as a defense platform but had an entirely agricultural purpose.^[ix]Additionally, the ground floor in these buildings was no longer used as a stable for livestock but as a living or workspace.

Fig. 6a and 6b: Former fortified house with an attached balcony in Dartlo: front and side views (Applis 2024; after Sumbadze 1963)

The most important characteristics of the transitional house were: the replacement of the open fireplace with a chimney or iron stove; the replacement of narrow windows with a limited number of larger, glazed windows; the division of space into individual rooms; the addition of a balcony with wooden railings, which connected the living room with the courtyard via a stone or wooden staircase; the arrangement of wooden flooring and plastered ceilings; and the separation of home and barn. Tin stoves, window glass, kerosene, petroleum lamps, nails, saws, and other goods fundamentally changed the lives and lifestyles of the mountain dwellers. These changes are related to the expansion of economic ties across the whole of Georgia and into neighbouring regions under Tsarist rule.^[x]

Fig. 7: Transitional house in Parsma (Applis 2024; after Sumbadze 1963)

The transitional houses brought the typically Georgian open forms of balconies and galleries into the Tusheti highlands. The gloomy, forbidding fortress houses were opened up, their narrow hatches and embrasures enlarged to allow for glazed windows and additional doors. From the end of the 19th century onwards, balconies formed the focus in the design of residential buildings, and wooden galleries and balconies were equipped with elaborate ornamental friezes. On the one hand, these ornaments served a representative function, allowing families to demonstrate their status and wealth. On the other hand, the choice of ornaments also signaled allegiance to successive regimes: for instance, since the decline of the Russian Empire and the emergence of the Soviet state, the patterns also feature the hammer and sickle on many balconies that have survived to this day.^[xi]

Fig. 8: Transitional house in Shenako (Applis 2024)

Stefan Applis is a professor at the Institute of Philosophy at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. As a geographer, his work focuses on the use of practice theory in human geography. The geographical focus of his work lies in the highland regions of the Caucasus, particularly in Tusheti and Svaneti; in Germany, he researches processes of transformation in urban spaces: on the one hand through migration processes in so-called ‘arrival city’ neighbourhoods, on the other hand through tourism practices, using the example of architectural monuments from the Nazi era.

^[i] Applis, Stefan, Florian Mühlfried, and Gwendoline Lemaitre. Tuschetien. Natur- und Kulturraumwandel im Großen Kaukasus[Tusheti. Changes in the Natural and Cultural Landscape of the Caucasus]. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2025, 39-40.

^[ii] Jeronim Perović, From Conquest to Deportation. The North Caucasus under Russian Rule (Hurst, 2018), 62-66.

^[iii] Mühlfried, Florian. Being a State and States of Being in Highland Georgia. New York und Oxford: Berghahn, 2014, 39-45.

^[iv] Mühlfried, Being a State, 33.

^[v] Makalatia, Sergi. Tusheti. Folk Traditions. Georgia: Artanuji Publishing, 2022. Reprint of the 1930 edition.

^[vi] Vogler, Jesse, Nana Sumbadze, Nodar Sumbadze, and Maya Sumbadze. Tusheti: Folk Architecture of the Caucasus 01. Editing, translation, and first publication of the 1963 study by Longinoz Sumbadze. Georgia: Free University Tbilisi, 2023.

^[vii] Applis, Mühlfried, und Lemaitre, Tuschetien. Natur- und Kulturraumwandel, 40.

^[viii] Vogler et al., Tusheti: Folk Architecture, 34.

^[ix] Vogler et al., Tusheti: Folk Architecture, 34-35.

^[x] Vogler et al., Tusheti: Folk Architecture, 35.

^[xi] Mühlfried, Being a State, 55-63.

Note: All photographs and drawings are copyrighted by the author, with the exception of the illustration by Ernst Lang of the Omalo settlement in Merzbacher, Aus den Hochgebirgen des Kaukasus [From the High Mountains of the Caucasus], 715; there are no copyright issues.