Ansicht von Tiflis im Kaukasus.

Title

Ansicht von Tiflis im Kaukasus.

Description

Magnificent general view of the city of Tbilisi in the Caucasus, Georgia.

c. 1877

Artist

Anonymus

Historical Description

Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia. According to the Georgian Chronicles, Tbilisi was founded in the 4th century by a Persian ethnarch. In the 2nd half of the 5th century, the Georgian king Vakhtang I. Gorgassali conquered the town and made it his capital. Theophanes of Byzantium is the first Byzantine writer to name the city Metropolis for the year 571. In the 7th century the city was conquered by the Arabs, then passed into Persian, Byzantine and in 1068 Seljuk possession. In 1121, after being liberated by David the Builder, it once again became the Georgian capital and, thanks to its fortified location at the intersection of what are now seven European-Asian trade routes, one of the richest cities of the Middle Ages. Marco Polo reported that in Georgia there was a "splendid city called Tbilisi, surrounded by suburbs and many fortresses." From 1386 to 1402, Tbilisi belonged to Timur's Central Asian Empire. In the 17th century the city fell under Turkish rule, was reconquered and fortified by the Georgian king Irakli II. In the 18th century, the Turks again seized the city, but were driven out again in 1735 by Nader Shah of Persia, who installed the Georgian king Theimuras. His son Irakli brought the city to high prosperity. After the annexation in 1801, Georgia became part of the Russian Empire and Tbilisi, after repeated changes in the administrative structure, became the capital of the eponymous governorate in 1850. Russia administered the Caucasus from there. Russia, on the other hand, promoted the trade center, exempted a large part of the goods sold in Tbilisi as well as transit goods from taxes, thus the city flourished. The present cityscape was formed in the middle of the 19th century. On the initiative of the Russian Viceroy Prince Mikhail Vorontsov, the city was modernized and expanded after 1845. He appointed the Italian Giovanni Scudieri as chief architect, founded the first theater and the first public library in Transcaucasia.