Unlimited Bladeworks

Short answer: The Didgori memorial stands on the meadows of Mount Didgori, about 40 km west of Tbilisi in the Trialeti Range. It marks the Battle of Didgori, fought on August 12, 1121.

King David IV of Georgia, known as David the Builder, defeated a much larger Muslim coalition led by the Artuqid commander Ilghazi, acting for the Seljuk sultan. Medieval chroniclers gave wildly inflated figures for Ilghazi's army. Modern Georgian historians estimate 100,000 to 250,000 men, against roughly 55,000 on David's side, a force that included Kipchak allies and a small number of Frankish knights. Accounts credit David's victory to surprise and the terrain. The Georgian Chronicles call it the 'miraculous victory'. The next year, 1122, David took Tbilisi and made it his capital. The battle is traditionally seen as opening Georgia's medieval golden age. Sculptor Merab Berdzenishvili and architect Tamaz Gabunia designed the memorial, which went up in the early 1990s and won them the State Prize of Georgia in 1995. Dozens of giant swords are driven into the ground like crosses. Colossal sculptures of warriors lie scattered across the meadows, and at the center stands a concrete column shaped like a deda bodzi, the central pillar of a traditional Georgian house. Since 1997, a commemoration called Didgoroba has been held at the monument every August 12. The footage shows the swords against a blue sky and spread across the grassy ridges, with wildflowers in the foreground.

In collections:Places With a Story