Samshvilde (Georgian: სამშვილდე, [samʃʷilde]) is a ruined fortified city and archaeological site in Georgia, in the country's south, near the homonymous modern-day village in the Tetritsqaro Municipality, Kvemo Kartli region.

[5][6] Samshvilde is centered in a naturally fortified location, a rocky terrain at the confluence of the Khrami and Chivchavi rivers, 4 km south of the town of Tetritsqaro.

[16] The 8th-century Georgian inscription at the Sioni church, in an asomtavruli script, makes mention of two persons of the house of pitiakhsh, an Iranian-styled local dynasts who appear to have been in possession of Samshvilde.

By that time, the region around Samshvilde fell under influence of the newly established Muslim emirate, centered in Tbilisi, the former royal capital of Kartli.

[17] Around 888, Samshvilde was occupied by the Bagratid king Smbat I of Armenia, who entrusted the town to the charge of the two brothers of the Gntuni family, Vasak and Ashot.

[18] Vasak Gntuni was still recalcitrant and, c. 921, defected to the Georgian prince Gurgen II of Tao, prompting King Ashot to put the fortress under siege.

[19][6] In the closing decade of the 10th century, Samshvilde passed to the Kuirikids, an Armenian Bagratid collateral line of the Kingdom of Tashir-Dzoraget, who chose it as their capital.

[20] In 1001, David revolted, unsuccessfully, from the hegemony of his uncle, King Gagik I of Armenia, who, in a three-month-long campaign, ravaged Tashir, Samshvilde, and the Plain of the Georgians (Vrac'dast), as the historian Stepanos Asoghik referred to the surrounding district.

[24][25] Bagrat's son, George II, conceded control of the city to his powerful vassal Ivane I, Duke of Kldekari, thereby buying his loyalty, in 1073.

In 1578, Samshvilde was occupied by the Ottoman army under Lala Mustafa Pasha during its victorious campaign in Georgia, but, in 1583, it was recovered by King Simon I of Kartli.

The site includes ruins of several churches, a citadel, palaces, houses, a bridge over the Chivchavi river, water cisterns, bathes, a cemetery, and other accessory structures.

A now-lost Georgian inscription of 1672, published by E. Takaishvili, identifies the lady called Zilikhan, a former caretaker of the wife of King Vakhtang V of Kartli, as a renovator of the church.

[36] Inside the fortress walls, stands a small stone church, that of the Dormition, which contains a large, prehistoric black menhir, sooty of candle flames, with a cross and an Armenian text mentioning the prince Smbat inscribed into it in the 11th century.

The medieval tradition ascribes its construction to the 5th-century queen Sagdukht, but the extant edifice dates to c. 759–777 as suggested by a Georgian inscription from the better-preserved eastern façade, containing references to the contemporary Byzantine emperors Constantine V and Leo IV the Khazar.