Besides the dwarf Stalins, another striking Georgian monument is the equestrian statue of Queen Tamar (1184–1213) on the main square of Mestia (Svaneti).
Simon-Vazha Melikishvili’s bronze statue was erected in 2011 on Mestia’s central Seti Square. This was the “Misha era,” the final years of Mikheil Saakashvili’s presidency, when between 2010 and 2012 even the long-neglected remote region of Svaneti received a share of central development funds. Among other things, the main square was rebuilt at breakneck speed—it had previously been a rather neglected bus terminal and market square (as we can see in the 2007 film Svani).
A hallmark of this period was that Saakashvili gave contemporary artists—especially architects and public sculptors—remarkable freedom and strong support. Countless such works appeared across the country: the trend is best symbolized by the police palaces, those hyper-modern police stations that every town seemed to receive. The results were often excessive and divisive, but Saakashvili famously said: the weaker ones will be filtered out by time and eventually demolished; what matters now is spreading a new style across the country. That same spirit stands here too, next to Mestia’s equally modern municipal building.
Melikishvili’s Tamar statue also represented this new approach. The sculptor had already been dead for seven years by then, but Saakashvili—who wanted an unconventional monument to the queen in the Svan region so closely tied to her historically—chose his model, created around 2000, to be enlarged and cast in bronze for Mestia’s main square.
The model of the statue at the 2024 exhibition
Simon-Vazha Melikishvili (1936–2004) belonged to the so-called “Generation of the Sixties,” artists who, during the Khrushchev thaw, turned away from the didactic, heroic, and propagandistic style of official Soviet art. They reinterpreted historical and mythological themes in an abstract, organic, spiritual style, drawing on Georgian historical models and Christian or prehistoric iconography. Their works are often grotesque and ironic, and—seen from 2026—one can also sense in them something of the peculiar Soviet infantilism of the era.
Because of his style, most of Melikishvili’s sculptures remained only on paper or as plaster models—and often even those were destroyed, like his memorial project The Uncompromising Ones. He showed his work in secret studio exhibitions. During his lifetime he had only one public exhibition, in 2002. After his death, a major retrospective of his work was finally held in 2024 at the Georgian National Gallery. The video below gives an overview of it.
Even after his 2002 exhibition, Melikishvili’s Tamar statue sparked plenty of debate. Critics objected to the shape of the horse, which reminded them more of a pregnant cow than a horse. The sculptor replied that the heavy, shapeless horse symbolized Georgia itself—burdened in so many ways when Tamar inherited it—and highlighted how gracefully she steered it, bringing about Georgia’s golden age.
Queen Tamar (1184–1213) was crowned co-ruler by her father, George III, during his lifetime, in order to secure her legitimacy in the absence of a male heir. That is why Georgians do not call her queen, but king (mepe). Her reign marked the political, military, and cultural high point of Georgian history. She repeatedly defeated much larger Muslim coalitions and reconquered Armenia, Eastern Byzantium, and much of present-day Azerbaijan from the Seljuks. In 1204, she gave refuge in Trebizond to the Byzantine emperor expelled from Constantinople by the Crusaders. In Georgian school atlases, where every spread usually contains two historical maps, the central double-page spread is taken up by a single enormous map—simply to show how vast Georgia was under Tamar.
She abolished the death penalty, torture, and mutilation, and ensured religious freedom for all communities in her kingdom. Her court became a center of art and philosophy; Shota Rustaveli dedicated to her The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, which became Georgia’s national epic (and was canonized visually through the 19th-century illustrations of the Hungarian artist Mihály Zichy). During her reign, many important monasteries were built across the country. After her death, the Georgian Orthodox Church canonized her as a saint.
The horse’s covering and pedestal are indeed decorated with architectural and sculptural motifs taken from Georgia’s golden age.
On the front of the statue’s pedestal we can read the quote: ჩვენ ერთი სიმართლისა ვართ chven erti simartlisa vart, “our truth is one,” and above it the symbols of four religions: Muslim, Jewish, sun-worshipping pagan, and Christian. This refers to Queen Tamar reaffirming the charter of her great-grandfather, King David the Builder, which he had issued after the capture of Tbilisi in 1121 to protect the property and religious freedom of the city’s Muslim and Jewish merchants. Tamar added to it the protection of the religious freedom of pagans as well, since Georgia’s mountain regions at the time still partly or entirely practiced pre-Christian cults, and their participation in the army was important.
We see these same four symbols again in the center of the horse’s covering on its left side.
In Svaneti, countless legends live on about Queen Tamar, who is revered almost as a demigoddess. One says that she ruled her kingdom not from the softened comforts of Tbilisi, but from here, among her tough and beloved Svans, and near Ushguli the ruins of Chazhashi are still shown today as “Tamar’s Castle.” According to legend, every evening she summoned a handsome Svan soldier there, who was then executed at dawn so he could never speak of what he had experienced. Even so, the soldiers competed with each other for the honor.
Another legend says that she came to pray in the monastery church of Ushguli, which was named after the pagan sun goddess Lamaria, later identified with the Virgin Mary—and indeed, that Tamar herself was in fact Lamaria.
Lamaria Monastery in May snow
A third legend tells that when Tamar died, twelve coffins were buried across the country so that no one would know where she truly rested—but that her real grave is here, in Svaneti. Naturally, the Svan villages compete over which village it is. In the church of Svipi, the caretaker secretly showed me Tamar’s grave beneath the floorboards.
At first, the statue’s “disrespectful” form, so different from the classical canon, caused real shock in conservative Svaneti. But in the end Saakashvili’s prediction came true: the locals grew fond of their Tamar, and now they are attached to her. Since then, the main square has become the center of conflicts between the municipality and shop owners, and the surrounding buildings now stand abandoned and decaying. But the statue remains there untouched, waiting for her Svan subjects to make her surroundings and her country worthy of her once again.
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