Ingushetia is a country of towers

Since the ancient times, Ingush call themselves "the builders of the towers." It is not practical to build small wooden houses in the mountains, so the main place was always occupied by the stone towers. A residential tower should be built in one year, otherwise a family was considered weak and it could lose respect. The semi-combat towers, acknowledged masterpieces of the medieval tower architecture of the Caucasus, were different from the  residential by being better suited for defense purposes. They were placed along the perimeter of a village, on the road intersections, at the entrance to a gorge. It was easier not only to defend, but also to transmit signals of impending danger from one village to another. The combat towers ceased to be invincible with an advent of firearms and people stop building them. A medieval castle complex ‘Vovnushki’ (place of combat towers) was nominated in the recent contest ‘Seven Wonders of Russia’. It did not receive enough votes to get into the magnificent seven, but since the end of the Time of Troubles in the North Caucasus, the mountain Ingushetia opens its beauty for travel-lovers.