It was Vardzia, a troglodyte city of a remote antiquity, which the Georgians and Armenians believe to have been founded in the twelfth century by the father of Queen Thamar, and to have been completed by that princess. They say it was a favourite residence of Thamar; you are shown the cave in which she resided during winter, the terrace where she spent the summer days, the chapel where her brilliant court assembled, even, it is affirmed, the tomb where her remains were placed. This last object had evidently escaped the knowledge of the resident priest, although Dubois has sought to establish its identity with a curious structure which he found in the little sacristy on the inner side of the church. [39] Vardzia is, in fact, the city of Thamar, just as every castle in Georgia is the castle of Thamar and every antiquity a relic of the great queen. We picked our way among the boulders up the steep side of the cliff until it became a perpendicular wall. There commence the irregular horizontal rows of caves, stretching eastwards, where the escarpments are most abrupt. A narrow path ends at a polygonal structure of which the roof has fallen off. This edifice is either modern or has been extensively restored; it forms a gateway and seals the approach to the caves. The gate passed, you stand on a level footway, partly hollowed in the rock and partly supported by rude masonry, which takes advantage of the inequalities of the cliff-side. In the steepest places this footway is tunnelled through the rock, and it can, of course, be barricaded at any point. Thus it would appear that Vardzia is inaccessible to siege, at least by any of the usual means. But one remembers that Timur employed an ingenious contrivance to reduce the Georgians, when they fled to their caves. From the heights above he suspended wooden stages, from which his warriors leapt into the crowded grottoes or scattered fire among the panic-stricken foe. Vardzia itself is said to have been taken by this conqueror, by what methods I do not know. We were met by an old archimandrite and his deacon, the only inhabitants of this long-deserted place (Fig. 19). They are supported by the occasional contributions of pilgrims, who visit the church in great numbers at certain times. Both were sunk to an equal degree in abysmal ignorance, and the deacon was so shy in manner and movement, he seemed a half-tamed creature of the rocks. I asked them the meaning of the name Vardzia, which, according to Dubois, signifies, both in Georgian and Armenian, the fortress of the roses. They derived it from zia, which means uncle, and vard, I am here. They stoutly maintained this extraordinary derivation, in face of the doubt which we displayed.