Large balconies, high ceilings and arcades that ooze with liberty-like charm – this lavish modernist construction, which cannot go unnoticed in the heart of Tbilisi's Sololaki district, is in fact an old “Terror House”. In a twist of fate, the so-called “Makharadze House” was at once inhabited by the high ranking Soviet officials and their victims throughout the purges of 1930s and 1940s. Together with the adjacent buildings, it has borne witness to Georgia’s Soviet past.

The building is one of the many that the Soviet Past Research Laboratory (SOVLAB) has mapped out as part of its “red terror topography” project, an investigation on the Communist terror through routes and research on the buildings in which oppressors and victims lived. SOVLAB’s researcher Irakli Khvadagiani guides us through the life and death which unfolded behind the walls of 11, Kikodze Street.