Vartsikhe

Vartsikhe lies in the lowlands of Imereti, near the rivers of the Rioni basin. Byzantine writers knew its fortified settlement as Rhodopolis, a stronghold in the ancient kingdom of Lazica. In the seventeenth century it appears again as a castle belonging to the kings of Imereti, who kept a summer residence here and hunted in the neighbouring Ajameti forest. The old walls stood amid a landscape of woodland and cultivated river plains.