People and Places sites are related to Christianity. The city continues to be the administrative center of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Historical, religious architecture is preserved in the sixth century Jvari Monastery and 11th century Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. Religious art in the form of icons of the saints and details on the churches’ portals can be seen in most of these buildings. Because of its historical importance, the entire city is included in the United Nation’s list of World Cultural Heritage sites. Gori. Continuing westward from Mtskheta, still following the winding valley of the Mtkvari River, travelers come to a city looked down upon by a huge, brooding fortress. The Goristsikhe fortress spreads over the hillside above the city of Gori. Georgian kings built this huge structure to protect east-west caravan routes that followed the Mtkvari River and crossed Saram Pass. Today, the city is the center of a small but important agricultural region. Gori is the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, former leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin was a shoemaker’s son but rose to become the ruthless supreme leader of the world’s biggest country. His iron-fisted leadership spanned four decades, lasting from the 1920s to the early 1950s. Gori’s most important cultural landmark is the Stalin Museum, which includes the small house where he was born and spent his childhood. Kutaisi. This city can be reached by traveling westward from Gori and continuing along the twisting 110-mile highway that leads over the Suram Mountains from Tbilisi. This bustling city is home to more than 200,000 people, making it Georgia’s second largest urban center. Although it is ancient, present-day Kutaisi is an industrial center with coal mining and the Kutaisi Automotive Works as its two main industries. The city is also the economic center of the large agricultural region to the west. The fertile, subtropical Colchis Lowland, located on the floodplain of the Rioni
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