History
The earliest records of a fortress on the ridge above the Kura valley date from the second half of the 4th century, when a citadel called Shuris-tsikhe was built here in the reign of King Varaz-Bakur of Iberia. The Persians took it at the end of the 4th century, and the rulers of Kartli won it back in the 5th. Later masters of the city kept enlarging it: the Umayyad Arabs in the 7th and 8th centuries, and then the Georgian kings, among them David IV the Builder, who won Tbilisi back from Muslim rule in 1122. The present name comes from the Mongol Narin Qala, meaning little fortress. Much of the surviving wall dates from the 16th and 17th centuries, when Persians and Ottomans took turns controlling the city. In 1827, by then under Russian rule, the fortress was badly damaged – some sources blame an earthquake, others the explosion of a powder magazine – and the ruined sections were pulled down.
What to see
You can walk up from the old town or ride the cable car from Rike Park on the other side of the Kura. Paths run along the walls and towers, looking down on the domes of the sulphur baths in Abanotubani, the rooftops of the old town and the modern Bridge of Peace. Inside the walls stands the Church of St Nicholas, rebuilt in the 1990s with new frescoes, and on the neighbouring Sololaki ridge rises the aluminium statue of Mother Georgia.
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