Gardabani

Gardabani () is a city of 11,650 residents (2021) in the valley or plain of the same name, in the southern Georgian region of Kvemo Kartli and is the administrative centre of the Gardabani Municipality. It is located southeast of capital Tbilisi and from Rustavi in the Kvemo Kartli Plain at an elevation of above sea level. Until 1947 Gardabani was known as Karayazi () and the city status was granted in 1969, after a thermal power plant was built for Tbilisi in the 1960s causing rapid growth. Since then more plower plants have been built and the city nowadays supplies almost all thermally generated electricity in the country.

== History == 290px|thumb|upright=1.5|Cultural Center Gardabani was an inconspicuous village in the southern Georgian countryside until Russian rule in the 19th century. With the administrative division of the South Caucasus by the Russians, the settlement, at the time with the Azerbaijani name Karayaz(i) (, , often spelled Karaia in Georgian; also known under the Russian exonym Karatapa, , , ), became the namesake and center of Karayaz uchastok (Russian: Караязский участок) within the Tiflis Uyezd (part of Tiflis Governorate). Karayazi was mainly populated by Azerbaijanis, who at the time were referred to as Tatars like other Turkic-speaking ethnic groups. In 1886, 94% of the more than 5,000 residents of Karayazi uchastok were of Azerbaijani descent. Upon completion of the Tiflis - Baku railway line in 1883 a station opened in Karayaz.