According to the historian P. Ioseliani, Sighnaghi fortress was built in 1762 by King Erekle. Prince Vakhtang gives almost the same account, writing: "King Erekle built many villages and fortresses, and two most notable great fortresses — the fortress of Bochorma, which existed before but was small, and the fortress of Kiziki which they call Sighnaghi, thanks to which the people of Kiziki and of its other neighboring villages many times profited, being kept in peace from their enemies." The chronicler Oman Kherkheulidze notes only the fortress's renewal; in him we read: "King Erekle renewed the fortress of Gori, the wall of Sighnaghi, of Telavi..." and so on. Sighnaghi fortress has not come down to us in its original form, but we can form an idea of it from a plan drawn at the beginning of the 19th century. Most interesting of all, the fortress's gates and towers have kept their original names.