Rustavi

Rustavi lies in Georgia's Kura valley, along routes connecting farming districts with towns and neighbouring parts of the southern Caucasus. It has an ancient urban and ecclesiastical inheritance. Medieval warfare and invasions profoundly changed the town and surrounding country; agriculture and river-valley transport remain important context for its longer history.

During the later Middle Ages, the Georgian kingdom fragmented into competing political centres. Eastern Georgia faced strong Iranian influence as well as pressure from the Ottomans and other powers. Kings and nobles negotiated allegiance, tribute and military support amid changing conflicts. Russian intervention grew in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and eastern Georgia was incorporated into the Russian Empire. Rustavi later became an industrial city, but the history of its river-valley site reaches much further back.