Day 59 7th July Mestia
We arrived last night in Mestia a major rural centre in the region of Svaneti.
So this morning after yet another hearty (rather than heart friendly) Georgian breakfast consisting of cheese with more cheese to follow, we walk into town.
In all villages in Georgia you become aware of stone towers dotting the landscape.In Mestia there are more than twenty and today we looked inside one of them which was built by the Radiani family in the 10th century.
We were lucky enough to have a gentleman who was a direct descendant show us around.What followed was an amazing story and social history of the area. We started in the basement which was where the family spent winter along with the animals.The animals were kept in stalls and the family of twenty five slept on platforms above them. The whole area was designed to retain heat and one of the amazing pieces kept in place was a slab of stone raised over the fireplace in the centre.It had two functions, the first to prevent fire spreading and burning the ceiling and the second to dissipate heat.We were then drawn to the “mother post” which was a large beam holding up the ceiling.This was to represent that women hold up the family and the surrounding household.Within the post was a set of shelves on which were placed valuable items in the form of an alter.
We returned to the upper floor and were told more of the history of the actual tower.It had taken three years to build and the main builders were a brother and sister of the family.From what we could ascertain all the workers were members of the immediate family.Mr Radiani also told of the function of the tower as a protection against other tribes and indeed other neighbouring families.He talked of vendettas of families steeling land from one another, and wives leaving husbands. In the latter case if the wife left it was assumed by her family that it was because the husband was at fault.Apparently at that point the wife’s brothers had then to take he life of the ex husband and then he was avenged by his brother and so on… So much for peaceful valleys :-).
So of course being a tower of some thirty metres it not only gave you protection but allowed you to spy on the neighbours and incoming intruders.So David and I decided to climb the internal ladders up the multiple stories and gaze out upon the valley.A beautiful view!
After we gave our thanks to our host we headed back into town.As we walked I considered some of the major questions Mel and I always discuss.How long do you spend in a place? How much time do you devote to understanding a place?. This thinking was motivated by what we had just seen and heard.We have passed many of these towers as we travelled through these mountains and thought they were pretty cool but if we hadn’t stopped and listened then we would have no so little of their cultural significance.
These questions kept arising as we went to our next stop the Svaneti Regional Museum.The museum is a very well organised and has a wonderful collection of artefacts from the region beautifully presented with with English translations and terrific lighting to bring out the best of the exhibits.
The following artefacts particularly caught our eye.
After seeing the exhibits we headed for the roof which had a great view of the village which is in the photo at the top of the page.
After a quick lunch we walked to the chair lift which took as in two stage up to see Mount Zeruldi. After a pleasant short walk in the surrounds of lift station we headed back down and walked back to our hotel.
