Travel Guide Tskaltoubo

Tskaltoubo is a city like no other. Half an hour away from Kutaisi, the town on the lush plain of the Imérétie Plain was built in the Stalinist era as a luxury spa town. Specialized in "speleotherapy", it received the greatest, Stalin himself liked to stay there in the 1950s. Even today, the imposing neoclassical buildings, quite successful in their genre, the sanatoriums and thermal baths of Tskaltoubo stand harmoniously in the heart of the thermal park. Totally dilapidated and invaded by Mingrelian refugees from Abkhazia in the 1990s, the seaside resort has regained a little of its splendour by falling under the will of Mikheïl Saakachvili, who was planning to transform it into a Georgian Las Vegas. A few brand new casinos reopened and the sanatoriums were taken over a little. But the refreshment works stopped there and Tskaltoubo is now between two waters, keeping its air of a remnant of a fallen civilization. It is still possible to take a cure in some of the site's sanatoriums, which can still accommodate 700 visitors (compared to the 9,000 refugees housed in the rest of the complex). In bath no. 9 you can ask to visit and you will be taken to see Stalin's private spa and the bath where he used to relax.