In an essay on Ushguli’s constituent villages, the Italian architect Vinzenzo Pavan (2011) points to the similarities, which at first glance might appear confusing, between these ensembles and the architectural structure of thirteenth-century Italian city states, each with their groups of towers and neighbouring stone buildings whose arrangement in the space does not, at first glance, appear to follow an evident logic; they seem to have been cast into compact units of settlement, each sharply boundaried from their surroundings, appearing like fortresses with their solid slate slabs and limestone bricks.
The UNESCO World Heritage status is limited to the village of Chazhashi
The core site in Ushguli with UNESCO World Heritage status is limited to the village of Chazhashi, or, more properly, specific monuments and groups of buildings within it, amounting to an area of 1.09 ha which was subject in the Soviet period to protection as the Ushguli-Chazhashi Museum Reserve. A further 19.16 ha around it serve as a protected ‘buffer zone’ (Chazhashi’s 1-kilometre radius), including Ushguli’s other villages with individual buildings of particular architectural value and the agricultural landscape.
The UNESCO Commission deems Ushguli to represent a unique cultural space which fuses the defensive towers and their particular manner of construction (cf. the detailed discussion see Pavan 2011), along with other medieval-era buildings, including sacred structures, with an impressive and authentic mountainous landscape, thus meeting the fourth of the UNESCO World Heritage criteria, and which has survived to this day due to traditional methods of land use closely linked to further authentic characteristics of traditional Svan life (meeting criterion V). It is this set of circumstances, UNESCO considers, which ensures that the existing relationship between the local people and their environment will persist (cf. ICOMOS 1996; UNESCO 1997, p. 65). UNESCO additionally highlights the exclusive use of local building materials (in this case, slate slabs) and traditional techniques, a point valid for a total of 200 medieval-era buildings across the villages of Ushguli.
The other constituent villages, unlike Chazhashi, did not directly hold protected status as architectural ensembles in the Soviet era and do not today; this circumstance is due to changes to their architectural substance imposed by human action – particularly in Chwibiani and Zhibiani – or the destruction of the heritage by natural events such as land- and mudslides and avalanches (cf., inter alia, Tarragüel, Krol and van Westen 2012; National Atlas of Georgia 2019, p. 38- 42; for an overview on natural risks see Stadelbauer 2015). The World Heritage Committee, however, has stipulated that changes here be likewise subject to approval by state authorities, making the prevention of significant alterations to the architectural heritage of the whole of Ushguli a precondition for the retention of UNESCO World Heritage status. Despite this, the Georgian state has yet to present a sustainable plan for the management of the site (cf. Stadelbauer 2018), which would secure the long-term preservation of the ‘buffer zone’, protecting its buildings, managing the landscape and ensuring sustainable farming practices, taking a participatory approach to the involvement of the local administration and, above all, the population on the ground. UNESCO provides no financial support for building or maintenance work. The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) recommended restricting the conferment of World Heritage status to Chazhashi – which was counter to the Georgian state’s original application – but endowing the entire mountainous region in which it is set with a mention, evidently in the intent of encouraging further desirable practices in the area.
The ICOMOS recommendation on the village of Chazhashi
The following passage from the ICOMOS recommendation is indicative of the robustness with which the Council advocates the principles underlying its decisions and can well be read as a w