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Jinvali – more than just a dam Almost every visitor to Georgia passes by the Jinvali Reservoir most of them stop for a moment, enjoy the fantastic view, take a few photographs and get some information about the reservoir and perhaps the hydroelectric power station. They also mention in passing that there used to be a few villages here, but very few have ever heard of the sunken city of Jinvali, magnificent with its castles, palaces, streets, palaces and rich inhabitants. Here, in this blog, we want to change all that by giving you a detailed history of Jinvali, and at the end, a brief history of the reservoir and its hydroelectric power station. A brief history of Jinvali A quick glance at the map is enough to understand the strategic location of Jinvali. This is where the roads from the North Caucasus, eastern and western Georgia, Samakhablo (now South Ossetia) and the capital Tbilisi converged. For several centuries, when the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi, was under foreign occupation, people travelled from west to east and vice versa via Jinvali. Jinvali was an important trading town, with numerous castles and fortresses, as well as many craft industries. The inhabitants were very wealthy and not everyone was allowed to settle in the city. New settlers were only allowed to live outside the city. It was not easy to get into the city either, as it had the special task of controlling the "Gates of the Caucasus". Archaeological excavations also bear witness to the prosperity of the inhabitants. Several graves with numerous pieces of silver and gold jewellery have been discovered. The name Jinvali first appears in Georgian historiography during the reign of King Davit the Builder in the 12th century. Later, his great-granddaughter, Queen Tamara, made the Jinvari area subject to her loyal prince, Chiaber. When Chiaber's family tomb was opened, many interesting finds were unearthed, including seventeen coins belonging to Queen Tamara. This was all the more remarkable as only two of the queen's coins had previously been found, one in the Hermitage in St Petersburg and the other in the British Museum in London. Excavations in the former artisans' settlement of Jinvali revealed 1st-century tools for the production of plain and coloured glass. A 6th-century gold ring with an image of Jesus and the Virgin Mary was also found in Jinvali - the only comparable example in the Caucasus to date. In the city, space was strictly allocated not only for the living but also for the dead. There was a cemetery for nobles, a cemetery for rich people who were not of noble descent, and a cemetery for ordinary people. The city gate and its destruction The city had a large entrance gate at the bridge over the river Aragvi. The bridge was raised in the evening with ropes so that no one could enter the city uninvited. Unfortunately, the city could not resist every invasion. In the 13th century, the Mongols also entered the city through the bridge and the gate and completely devastated it. The city was rebuilt in the 14th century by King Giorgi V, but its glory days were numbered: in the same century, the Central Asian conqueror Timur Lenk destroyed Jinvali once again. Not enough time for archaeological work During the Soviet era, the area of Jinvali was divided into a hundred different archaeological zones. Only one zone could be explored, even though more than 1,000 artefacts dating from the 8th to the 1st centuries BC were found here alone. If all one hundred zones had been explored, over a million artefacts from different periods could have been recovered. Unfortunately, the historians and archaeologists of the time were not given enough time to do their work. Soon after the first zone was explored, the village was flooded and countless valuable artefacts, as well as numerous cultural monuments, churches and castles, went under the water. Jinvali Reservoir and Hydroelectric Power Station In 1971, work began on the construction of a hydroelectric power station in the Jinvali area. The site was geographically well suited, as rainwater and snowmelt collect here and the two rivers Pshavi Aragvi and Aragvi flow together. (The names are similar but the rivers are different). It was decided that the village had to be flooded and the people relocated. There were several small and large protests, but ordinary citizens were powerless against the authoritarian government. In 1985, the historic village of Jinvali and the surrounding settlements were flooded and the inhabitants relocated to neighbouring villages. The reservoir The reservoir has a surface area of 11.5 square kilometres and holds 520 million cubic metres of water. The maximum depth of the lake is 75 metres. The Pshavi-Aragvi and Aragvi rivers are dammed. Hydroelectric power station The water from the reservoir flows through a five-metre-wide pipe down a 160-metre drop to the water turbines, which drive the electrical generators that convert the mechanical energy into electrical energy. The Jinvali hydroelectric power station has an output of 130,000 kW. Water from the reservoir as drinking water for Tbilisi After power generation, some of the water continues to flow as the Aragvi River. Another part of the water is diverted through a six-metre wide and eight-kilometre-long tunnel into the Bodorna reservoir. The Bodorna reservoir is part of the Jinvali hydroelectric power station. From Bodorna, part of the water flows back into the Aragvi and much of it is diverted through a 42-kilometre tunnel to Tbilisi for the drinking water supply. On following trip, you will visit Jinvali |
