Saguramo

Saguramo is a small village in Mtskheta Municipality, ~30 km north of central Tbilisi, strung along the foot of the wooded ridge that shares its name. Most travellers stop for one reason: the country house of Ilia Chavchavadze (1837–1907), the writer, editor and reformer who led Georgia's national revival in the 19th century and whom the Georgian Church later made a saint. He built the brick house, wrapped in tiers of white wooden balconies, in 1895 and lived here between stays in Tbilisi until his death. It is now a memorial museum, with Zedazeni Monastery on the ridge above.

Inside, the rooms hold Ilia's furniture, manuscripts and family photographs, early issues of the newspapers he ran, and paintings and sculpture by Georgian artists. Afterwards, wander the shady garden he planted, past a round stone fountain, the old wine cellar and a monument to the writer. The slopes behind the village, once the Saguramo nature reserve, have been part of Tbilisi National Park since 2007, and a narrow road winds ~6 km up through the forest to the monastery. Hikers can carry on along the Zedazeni Monastery to Mamkoda trail, which follows the ridge south-east to the edge of Tbilisi.

A plaque beside the door says Ilia built the house in 1895 and lived in it until 1907. That year, travelling home from Tbilisi with his wife Olga Guramishvili, he was ambushed and shot dead by a band of gunmen at Tsitsamuri, a few kilometres short of Saguramo; tsarist and later Soviet investigators blamed different sides. Olga then handed the estate to the Georgian literacy society Ilia had co-founded in 1879, and for some years it housed a school. The museum opened in 1951, and in 2018 the government gave the house national monument status. Ilia lies in the Mtatsminda Pantheon and was canonised in 1987.