Nokalakevi (Archaeopolis): The Lost Capital of Ancient Lazica

Nokalakevi — known to the Byzantines as Archaeopolis and to the Georgian chronicles as Tsikhegoji — is one of the most historically important and least visited major archaeological sites in Georgia (the country in the South Caucasus). It occupies a naturally fortified promontory above the Tekhuri River in the Samegrelo region, about 70 kilometers northwest of Kutaisi. This was the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Egrisi (Lazika) and one of the decisive fortresses of late antiquity — the stronghold whose walls the Persians could not break in the great 6th-century war between Byzantium and Sasanian Persia. It's not a reconstructed or over-interpreted site: the ruins are substantial but atmospheric, the landscape around them much as it has been for centuries. Between the archaeology, the dramatic river-cliff setting, the rock-cut siege tunnel, and the deep associations with the world of Colchis and the Golden Fleece, Nokalakevi has a depth that its modest tourist profile completely fails to convey.

What is Nokalakevi?

Nokalakevi is a major multi-period archaeological site on a promontory above the Tekhuri River in the Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti region of western Georgia, about 70 km from Kutaisi. It carries three names from three traditions: Archaeopolis ("old city" in Byzantine Greek), Tsikhegoji ("fortress of Kuji," after a semi-legendary Colchian ruler, in the Georgian chronicles), and Nokalakevi ("the place where a town was" in Georgian). With traces of occupation going back to the Bronze Age, it became the capital of the Kingdom of Egrisi (Lazika) around the 4th century and a pivotal fortress in the 6th-century Byzantine–Sasanian Lazic War, its triple walls strengthened under Emperor Justinian. Its remains include those great fortification walls, towers and gates, a church, a small museum, and a remarkable rock-cut tunnel to the river. Quiet, atmospheric, and tied to the legend of the Golden Fleece, it's a rewarding stop for anyone drawn to ancient history.

Three names, three peoples

Few sites wear their history as plainly as Nokalakevi does in its names. To the Byzantine historians Procopius and Agathias, who wrote of it in the 6th century, it was Archaeopolis — Greek for "old city," a name that itself implies the place was already ancient by late antiquity. To the Georgian chronicles it was Tsikhegoji, "the fortress of Kuji," after Kuji, a semi-legendary Colchian eristavi (regional ruler) of the Hellenistic age. And in Georgian today it is Nokalakevi — roughly "the place where a town once stood." Three names from three traditions, all pointing to the same long-inhabited promontory.

Historical layers

There are traces of small-scale activity here as far back as the Bronze Age, and finds dating to the 8th–7th centuries BCE, so the promontory — defensible, beside a river, surrounded by fertile land — drew people early, in the landscape of ancient Colchis. By the Hellenistic period (roughly 4th–1st centuries BCE) it is described as one of the centers of Colchis, and may be the fortress of the ruler Kuji whose name the Georgian tradition preserves; most of those early defenses, however, were later overbuilt.

The site's great age came in late antiquity. Around the turn of the 3rd–4th centuries CE, Nokalakevi became the capital of the Kingdom of Egrisi — the realm the Romans and Byzantines knew as Lazika (Lazica). Its position, commanding a crossing of the Tekhuri and a strategic route into the interior, made it one of the key fortresses of the region, and it became the centerpiece of a famous struggle: during the Byzantine–Sasanian Lazic War (540–562), Archaeopolis was a principal stronghold guarding Lazika, and the Persians' repeated failure to take it eventually cost them control of the kingdom. The great fortifications — the most visible remains today — were built in three phases from the 4th to the 6th century, culminating in a major strengthening under the Byzantine emperor Justinian, whose own decrees counted Archaeopolis among the greatest and most ancient fortresses of the region.

The city continued through the early medieval Georgian period until it was destroyed in the 8th century during the campaign of the Arab commander Marwan ibn Muhammad (remembered in Georgia as "Murvan the Deaf"). After that its urban importance faded as the political map of western Georgia shifted, and the site passed into the slow deterioration of a place neither inhabited nor demolished — the massive walls surviving where their bulk resisted collapse, lesser structures vanishing into the vegetation, the whole promontory settling into the silence of a city given back to nature.

The Colchis and Golden Fleece connection

Nokalakevi sits in the heartland of ancient Colchis — the kingdom of Greek myth ruled by King Aeetes and his daughter Medea, the land the Argonauts sailed to in quest of the Golden Fleece. The myth places the Colchian royal center somewhere on the eastern Black Sea, and scholars have proposed various sites in the western Georgian lowlands; Nokalakevi, as a major fortified Colchian center thought to have been a regional capital, is among those most seriously considered. Equating myth with a specific spot is always uncertain, and this should be taken as association rather than established fact — but it isn't arbitrary: the site's antiquity, scale, and position in the Colchian heartland fit the ancient descriptions, and the modern explorer Tim Severin even sailed a reconstructed Argo to Georgia to retrace the Argonauts' route.

Whether or not the identification holds, the resonance is real. To stand within the walls of a city that was old when the Greek world was first telling the stories that became the Argonautica, looking out over the Tekhuri toward the distant coast the Argonauts sailed, is to feel the mythological and the archaeological converge. Georgia's link to the Golden Fleece runs through its ancient identity — Medea stands in Batumi's central square, among other places — and Nokalakevi is where that thread feels most physically present.

The site

The remains spread across some 20 hectares of the promontory and its surroundings, so the site takes time to walk properly. The most dramatic survivals are the fortification walls, running along the promontory edges and incorporating the natural cliffs where the terrain does the defensive work itself; the citadel was ringed by three parallel walls (hence the Georgian description of "the triple-walled fortress"). They stand in places to considerable height — weathered but structurally coherent — and walking them gives both the scale of the defensive system and the best views over the river valley.

Within the circuit, the foundations of towers, gates, a church, and internal structures emerge from the vegetation that has colonized the site over centuries. Archaeology here has been serious and sustained: excavations since 1973, and since 2001 the Anglo-Georgian Expedition (a long-running collaboration involving the University of Winchester), so the excavated zones read far more clearly than the unexcavated ones. A small museum at the entrance presents finds spanning the site's long life — ceramics, metalwork, architectural fragments — and gives the ruins their context.

The natural setting is central to the site's character. The Tekhuri River runs below the promontory, audible from the upper levels and visible from the walls above the valley; the river-side cliffs are dramatic in themselves, and the forested slopes give the archaeological zone an enclosed, slightly secretive quality quite unlike open, flat sites visible from afar. The approach — the walls emerging gradually above the trees — has the quality of discovery that the best archaeological sites in wild settings provide.

The tunnel

One of Nokalakevi's most unusual features is an ancient tunnel cut through the rock of the promontory, connecting the fortified upper area with the Tekhuri River below. It was part of the defenses and the water-supply system — letting defenders reach the river during a siege without exposing themselves — and it's one of the more impressive pieces of ancient military engineering at the site. Walking through it, the ancient stone-cutting close at hand and the light of the river entrance ahead, is one of the most memorable specific experiences Nokalakevi offers.

Getting there and visiting

• Location: Nokalakevi, Senaki municipality, Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti, western Georgia, on the Tekhuri River — about 70 km northwest of Kutaisi (and ~15 km from Senaki, on the Martvili road).
• Getting there: About an hour by car from Kutaisi through the forested-hill-and-lowland landscape of western Georgia. Public transport is limited, so private transport or a taxi from Kutaisi or another western-Georgia base is the practical option.
• Hours / admission: Open regular daytime hours; a modest entrance fee covers the archaeological site and the small museum.
• Time needed: About 1–1.5 hours for the main remains, the tunnel, and the museum; more to walk the full wall circuit.
• Best time: Spring through autumn — the shoulder seasons (roughly April–June and September–October) are ideal, with the setting at its most photogenic and the lower remains less obscured by summer growth; winter is muddier in the forested terrain.
• Combine with: Martvili Monastery and the Martvili Canyon (on/near the same road), and the wider Samegrelo–Imereti circuit from a Kutaisi base.