Georgia
A mountain crossroads between Europe and Asia
Georgia sits where the Greater Caucasus mountains tumble down to the Black Sea, an ancient nation that bridges Europe and Asia with its own alphabet, its own liturgical Christianity, and a winemaking tradition reaching back eight thousand years. Snow peaks, subtropical coast, and cliff-perched monasteries crowd a country smaller than many would expect. A culture of legendary hospitality and a turbulent recent history of war and revolution define a proudly independent land at a strategic crossroads.
The Greater Caucasus form a dramatic northern wall, rising to Shkhara, while the Lesser Caucasus frame the south and the fertile Kolkheti lowlands open to the Black Sea coast, where the climate turns humid subtropical. Fast rivers cut deep gorges through the highlands. Agriculture, wine, tourism, hydropower, and its role as a transit corridor for Caspian oil and gas pipelines sustain the economy.
Georgian kingdoms flourished in a golden age around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries before centuries of Persian, Ottoman, and Russian domination. After a brief independent republic, Georgia was absorbed into the Soviet Union and regained independence in 1991. The 2003 Rose Revolution turned it westward, but conflict with Russia in 2008 left the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia outside Tbilisi's control. The capital, Tbilisi, straddles the Mtkvari River beneath an old fortress.