Georgiaსაქართველო (Sakartvelo)

In antiquity the land that is now Georgia was two kingdoms. Colchis in the west, on the Black Sea, was the land of the Golden Fleece in Greek myth; Greek traders settled its coast, and the story of sheepskins used to catch gold dust in mountain streams is still told in Svaneti. Iberia in the east, with its capital at Mtskheta where the Aragvi meets the Mtkvari, looked more towards Persia.

The rock-cut town of Uplistsikhe near Gori, with halls, a theatre and a pagan temple carved into sandstone, shows the pre-Christian culture of Iberia. Tombs at Vani in the west have yielded gold jewellery of astonishing fineness, now in the National Museum in Tbilisi.

Georgians call themselves Kartvelebi and their country Sakartvelo. The Georgian language belongs to the small Kartvelian family with Svan, Mingrelian and Laz, unrelated to Indo-European, Turkic or Semitic languages around it. The Georgian script, in its rounded modern form Mkhedruli, is one of only a handful of distinct alphabets still in daily national use.

Tradition holds that St Nino, a woman from Cappadocia, converted King Mirian III and Queen Nana of Iberia around 337, making it one of the first Christian states. Her cross, made of vine branches bound with her own hair, is the symbol of the Georgian Church; the relic is kept in Sioni Cathedral in Tbilisi.

The Georgian Orthodox Church became self-governing early and developed its own architecture: compact domed churches with conical drum roofs, stone relief carving on outer walls, and frescoes inside. Jvari, on a hill above Mtskheta, set the cross-in-square plan in the sixth century; Svetitskhoveli below is the burial place, in legend, of Christ's robe.

The Church today is the most trusted institution in the country and a powerful voice in politics and society. Visitors see its presence everywhere: people crossing themselves as buses pass churches, candles in dark interiors, and long services where people stand throughout.

After centuries of Arab and Byzantine pressure, the Bagrationi dynasty united western and eastern Georgia around 1008. King David IV, called the Builder (reigned 1089–1125), drove out the Seljuk Turks, retook Tbilisi in 1122 and founded Gelati Monastery near Kutaisi as an academy of learning. He is buried under the gate there so that visitors walk over him, as an act of humility.

His great-granddaughter Tamar (reigned 1184–1213) was crowned king rather than queen. Her reign marked the height of Georgian power, from the Black Sea to the Caspian. The cave monastery of Vardzia, cut into a cliff with hundreds of rooms, was built under her, and Shota Rustaveli dedicated to her the national epic, The Knight in the Panther's Skin.

The Mongol invasions of the 1220s–1240s ended the Golden Age. Georgia later split into kingdoms and princedoms squeezed between Safavid Persia and the Ottoman Empire, which explains the fortress churches, watchtowers and hilltop refuges you see in the mountains.

In 1783 King Erekle II of Kartli-Kakheti accepted Russian protection against Persia; Persia sacked Tbilisi anyway in 1795, and in 1801 Russia annexed the kingdom outright. Over the nineteenth century Tbilisi (then Tiflis) became the administrative capital of the Russian Caucasus, with opera house, boulevards and Armenian merchant houses, and the Georgian Military Road through Kazbegi linked it to Russia.

After the 1917 revolution, the Democratic Republic of Georgia was independent from 26 May 1918 until the Red Army invaded in February 1921. Georgia's most famous son, Ioseb Jughashvili — Stalin — was born in Gori, and his birthplace museum there still presents him with little criticism. Under Soviet rule Georgia was relatively prosperous, famous for wine, tea and Black Sea holidays.

On 9 April 1989 Soviet troops broke up a peaceful rally on Rustaveli Avenue, killing 21 people. It turned opinion decisively towards independence, declared in 1991.

Archaeologists have found grape residue on pottery near Tbilisi from around 6000 BCE, among the oldest evidence of winemaking in the world. The traditional method uses a qvevri, a large egg-shaped clay jar buried in the ground: grapes are crushed and fermented with their skins, stems and seeds, sealed and left for months. White grapes made this way turn amber and tannic. UNESCO lists the qvevri method as intangible heritage.

Kakheti in the east grows most of the wine, with Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane for whites and Saperavi, a red-fleshed grape, for reds. The Soviet era turned Georgia into a bulk supplier of semi-sweet wine; since the 2000s small producers have revived qvevri wine, and a Russian embargo in 2006–2013 pushed winemakers to find new markets.

The supra is the feast at which wine is drunk. A tamada, chosen for eloquence, proposes a sequence of toasts — to God, to peace, to the dead, to parents, to women, to guests — and guests respond or add. Polyphonic singing, also on UNESCO's list, often breaks out. The rhythm of toasts, not the quantity of wine, is the point.

Independence brought civil war and ethnic conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the early 1990s, which left both regions outside Tbilisi's control and hundreds of thousands of Georgians displaced. The 2003 Rose Revolution brought Mikheil Saakashvili, who cut corruption and rebuilt the police, but in August 2008 a short war with Russia ended with Russian troops based in both regions, which Moscow recognises as independent.

The Georgian Dream party of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili has governed since 2012. Georgia gained EU candidate status in December 2023, but a 'foreign agents' law in 2024, a disputed parliamentary election that October and the government's decision to suspend EU accession talks led to months of nightly protests on Rustaveli Avenue and arrests of opposition figures and journalists. Western governments have criticised the direction; the government says it is protecting sovereignty.

For visitors, daily life is calm and hospitable, and tourism keeps growing. The practical points are to avoid demonstrations, to stay far from the occupation lines, and to remember that a conversation about Russia or politics is personal for almost everyone you meet.