VIRTUAL ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)
Abstract
The “Khada Valley” represents one of Georgia’s most significant and strategic historical points in the highlands of Eastern Georgia. For centuries, an important route connecting the South and North Caucasus passed through this valley, and it can be said that this circumstance largely determined the structuring of the valley’s architectural morphology, which is noticeably manifested in the overall settlement structure, the abundance of the places of worship, churches and shrines, defensive architecture, as well as their planning and artistic specificity. Generally, the leading theme of Khada’s architecture and the defining structures of its historical landscape are defensive systems – the “backed tower” is one of the most interesting ancient defensive structures, documented only in several microregions of Eastern Georgia, while the “Khada Valley” contains an exceptional concentration of this type, with their chronological range spanning from the 5th-6th to the 16th-17th centuries. Particularly noteworthy in the “Khada Valley” are historically formed residential complexes and separate buildings. Currently surviving residential structures mainly date from the 18th-20th centuries, though earlier layers are frequently encountered. Mountain architectural complexes combine residential, defensive, economic, and religious spaces – here we find no sharp separation between economic and residential areas. The historical-ethnographic, historical-geographic, and territorial unit formed centuries ago in the “Khada Valley” maintained its autonomy until recently, which is now being sacrificed to contemporary infrastructural projects. The presentation aims to study various aspects of “Khada Valley” architecture, including defensive elements, religious components, traditional residential spaces and artistic decoration, within the context of Caucasian mountainous settlements. [Research supported by Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia,[Grant No. FR-23-569].
Ekaterine Kvachatadze (PhD in Art History) has been a Senior Researcher at the Giorgi Chubinashvili National Research Centre for Georgian Art History and Heritage Preservation. She is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Georgia and at Caucasus University, teaching History of Medieval Georgian Art. She is co-author of Medieval Georgian Sculpture (2017) and The Funerary Monuments of Georgia from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries (2022). Her research focuses on Georgian medieval art, sculpture, architectural heritage, and traditional dwellings.
Nodar Aronishidze is a Research Fellow at the Giorgi Chubinashvili National Research Centre for Georgian Art History and Heritage Preservation, where he serves as Head of the Archive and Library Department. He is currently pursuing doctoral studies at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts. He is the author and co-author of several monographs and scholarly publications published in both international and local academic journals. His primary field of research is medieval Georgian secular, religious, and defensive architecture;
Gogoturi Misriashvili is an architect-restorer and a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Restoration, Art History and Theory at the Apollon Kutateladze Tbilisi State Academy of Arts. He has restored numerous Georgian secular and ecclesiastical monuments. His research focuses on the rehabilitation and renovation of traditional Georgian dwellings. He is a researcher and participant in the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia grant project (2023–2026), “Traditional Dwellings in Eastern and Southern Georgia.”