Surami

Surami fortress stands on a rocky hill above the town on the old road between eastern and western Georgia, walls and towers of stone and brick built and rebuilt over centuries at a point that controlled the pass. It carries one of the best-known Georgian legends: that the walls kept collapsing until a young man agreed to be immured alive in them, after which they stood, a story retold in a nineteenth-century novel and in a film that made it widely familiar. The fortress is unrestored and free to walk into. The town below is known for a different reason: rows of women selling nazuki, a sweet spiced bread baked in clay ovens, to passing traffic.

What you actually see

• Walls and towers on the hill - the unrestored fortress above the town.
• The immurement legend - the story attached to the walls.
• Nazuki sellers on the roadside - sweet spiced bread sold to passing cars.
• The pass position - the point the fortress was built to control.

When to go

April to October. Two hours as a stop on the Tbilisi to Kutaisi road. Nazuki is best bought warm from the ovens rather than from the roadside baskets.

Honest expectations

The fortress is a ruin with loose stone, unfenced drops and no interpretation. The town is a busy road corridor. Nazuki sellers can be persistent. The site takes half an hour.

Nearby

Khashuri is east; Borjomi lies south.