Why go
Dartlo is the most architecturally intact of Tusheti's preserved villages, its silver-grey slate houses and medieval defensive towers climbing a terraced hillside above the Pirikiti Alazani River. The village was abandoned during Soviet-era collectivization and only resettled in the 1990s, with careful restoration preserving its distinctive Tush building traditions: two-story houses with overhanging upper floors, stone-paved streets, and towers that once protected against Lezgin raids and blood feuds. Today it serves as the gateway to the Pirikiti Valley and a living example of highland Georgian vernacular architecture, with a handful of families maintaining the seasonal rhythm of shepherding that defined Tusheti for millennia. The silence here—broken only by river sound and sheep bells—is the point.