Ushguli, Georgia: Svan Towers and Life in a High-Mountain Village

Ushguli, Georgia, is not one village but four: Zhibiani, Chvibiani, Chazhashi and Murkmeli, strung along the upper Enguri River at roughly 2,100 metres, directly beneath the glaciers of Mount Shkhara. Grey stone towers, some of them close to a thousand years old, still rise above houses that families live in through long, snowbound winters. It is one of the most complete medieval settlements left in the Caucasus, and it survives largely because it is so hard to reach. On Day 12 of Odyssey’s 22-day small group tour of the Caucasus, the group makes the two-hour drive from Mestia to spend a full day here, walking among the towers and sitting down with a local family.

Ushguli, Georgia: Four Villages at the Foot of Mount Shkhara

The name Ushguli belongs to a community rather than a single settlement. Georgians call this kind of union of villages a khevi, and Ushguli was historically self-governing. Its four villages sit between roughly 2,060 and 2,200 metres above sea level at the head of the Enguri valley in Upper Svaneti. Above them rises Mount Shkhara, the highest peak in Georgia, and the Enguri itself begins beneath its glacier.

Chazhashi is the village most visitors picture when they think of Ushguli. UNESCO singles it out in the Upper Svaneti listing, noting that it has preserved more than two hundred medieval tower houses, churches and castles. The other three villages are quieter and more scattered, and it is the way all four sit together in one high valley, rather than any single monument, that gives the place its character. By most estimates only around two hundred people live here year-round, in perhaps seventy families.

Is Ushguli really the highest village in Europe?

Ushguli was long counted as the highest permanently inhabited settlement in Europe, but the title has been contested since a 2014 census recorded a single permanent resident in Bochorna, a hamlet in Georgia’s eastern Tusheti region at about 2,345 metres. Odyssey’s itinerary sensibly describes Ushguli as one of the highest. The ranking matters less than the fact that families here still live and work year-round, in houses built by their ancestors and under mountains that close the valley for months at a time.

Svan Towers: Defence, Family and Community

The towers, called koshkebi in Georgian, are the reason Ushguli sits on the UNESCO World Heritage List, which inscribed Upper Svaneti in 1996. Most were built between the 9th and 12th centuries, rise 20 to 25 metres, and stood beside the homes of individual families. Their tapering stone walls and narrow openings served several purposes at once: refuge from invaders, shelter during the inter-clan feuds that could run for generations, protection from avalanches, and secure storage for valuables. Odyssey’s itinerary counts more than twenty towers in Ushguli, and other sources put the figure nearer thirty, with the highest concentration in Chazhashi.

What makes the towers more than picturesque is that they can still be read as a system. Each belonged to a household, and a cluster of them shows how families lived side by side, wary and interdependent, in a place where the state was a long way off. Isolation is the reason so many survive: they stand because, for centuries, nobody had the means or the need to replace them. It is the same story told in our guide to Svaneti, Georgia, where Ushguli sits within three days in the region.

Protection today is formal as well as accidental. UNESCO notes that the individual elements and the entire villages of the Ushguli community are also listed as national monuments under Georgian heritage law, and that interventions require a permit from the relevant authorities. That is one reason the skyline looks as it does, and why new building around the older core is tightly controlled.

Lamaria and the Churches of Ushguli

Lamaria, the Church of the Mother of God, stands in Zhibiani and is still an active place of worship. It is a simple medieval hall church with a projecting apse and an ambulatory, and sources differ on its date, some placing it in the 9th and 10th centuries and others in the 12th. Visitors’ accounts describe frescoes inside, and UNESCO’s description of Upper Svaneti refers to the region’s ancient churches and mural paintings as part of what survives alongside the towers.

Chazhashi has its own Church of the Saviour, and local tradition attaches Queen Tamar’s name to a pair of buildings in the villages, described as her summer and winter residences. The royal link is a matter of tradition rather than settled history, but the association tells you something useful: even a community this remote saw itself as part of a wider Georgian kingdom in its 12th-century golden age, connected by church and crown to places it might never visit. For travellers with time, a small ethnographic museum at the centre of the settlement displays local objects from the medieval period to the present.

A Day in Ushguli on Odyssey’s Caucasus Tour

Ushguli is the centrepiece of Day 12 on the route described in our 22-day Caucasus itinerary from Baku to Yerevan. The group has already crossed the Enguri Canyon on Day 11, after visiting Gelati Monastery near Kutaisi, whose Colchian and medieval story we cover in our guide to Kutaisi and the Kingdom of Colchis. Three nights in Mestia then give the region room to breathe: Ushguli on the middle day, and the Mestia Ethnographical and Historical Museum on the third.

On the day itself, the drive west from Mestia takes about two hours, with stops at several remote villages and churches along the way. In Ushguli the group walks through the community and its surroundings, is hosted by a local family, and learns about and tastes Sulguni, the local cheese, before driving back to Mestia in the afternoon. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included, and the rest of the afternoon in Mestia is free.

It helps to arrive with a few things to look for. Notice how each tower stands in relation to its house, and how the towers within a village are spaced, because the pattern shows which families were neighbours and which were rivals. Notice the stonework, which is laid with the confidence of builders who had no other material and no quick way to import one. And look up the valley, where Shkhara closes the horizon, to understand why an entire way of life could persist here with so little outside interference for so long.

How long is the drive from Mestia to Ushguli?

Allow about two hours each way. Odyssey sets aside a full day for the round trip, with stops at remote villages and churches en route, so Ushguli is unhurried rather than squeezed between other visits. Mountain roads in Svaneti are long and at times rough: the tour notes give the drive from Kutaisi to Mestia as 220 kilometres and about four and a half hours, and describe conditions in the region as basic.

How much walking is there on the Ushguli day?

Ushguli is a walking day on uneven ground, not a hike. The tour is rated Level 2 – Moderate, meaning three to five hours of physical activity a day, the equivalent of up to eight kilometres on uneven ground, and the village lanes and paths between the settlements fit within that. At just over 2,000 metres the altitude is noticeable rather than daunting for most people, though anyone with a heart or lung condition should check with their doctor first. Our guide to what a 22-day small group journey involves covers the physical side of the whole route in more detail.

Sulguni and the Family Table

Sulguni is a brined, elastic cheese with a salty, slightly sour edge, traditionally associated with western Georgia. Tasting it in a Svan home, rather than in a restaurant in Tbilisi, changes what the cheese is: dairy is part of how a high-mountain household feeds itself, and the conversation around the table is often as informative as the food.

The family visit is where the architecture of the morning becomes human-scale. It is a good moment to ask how a household manages a winter at this altitude, how the older tower houses are used today, and what has changed for young people in the villages. Svan cooking has its own repertoire too, including kubdari, a spiced meat pie, and a seasoned salt that turns up on tables across Svaneti. Our comparison of Caucasian food across three countries places it within the wider table of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Living Heritage: What Keeps Ushguli Alive

The towers draw the visitors, but the reason Ushguli has stayed intact is that it has stayed lived in. Heritage protection sets the rules for what can be built, and remoteness set the terms long before that; what holds the two together is the ongoing presence of families who keep livestock, put up with winter, and stay when it would be easier to leave.

Visitors help a place like this and can also change it. A small group of no more than 14 travellers, travelling with a local guide, is very much the scale the villages suit: quieter on the lanes and far easier for a family to host than a coach party. It is also the pace that suits mature travellers who want the learning behind the landscape, not only the view. For a country-level baseline on Georgia, including Tbilisi and the wider history, see our definitive guide, Discovering Georgia.

When is the best time to visit Ushguli?

Late spring to early autumn suits Ushguli best, and Odyssey’s departures in May and October sit at either edge of that window. The tour page describes Svaneti’s climate as stern, with cold winters and long, cool springs and summers, so bring warm layers for a village above 2,000 metres even on a bright day. For country-level questions on visas, currency and language, see our guide to questions about Georgia.

Why Ushguli Repays the Long Drive

Ushguli is not a place you can see quickly, and that is exactly its value: stone towers, a working community and one of Europe’s highest valleys, understood properly only by giving it a full day. Odyssey’s Caucasus tour does that, with a local guide, a group of 6–14 travellers and solo travellers welcome, before the route carries on to the Black Sea at Batumi and then to Armenia. If the itinerary appeals, the 22-day Caucasus small group tour has current dates and pricing, and a Tour Specialist can talk you through the details.