Ozurgeti

Ozurgeti is the capital of Guria, a small, green town of about 14,000 people on the Bzhuzhi river, in the foothills between the Black Sea coast and the Meskheti range. It was the home of the Gurieli princes who ruled Guria, and later a centre of tea and hazelnut processing. Few foreign travellers stop here, but it is a pleasant, walkable town with a market, parks and cafés around the centre, and it is the natural base for Shemokmedi Monastery and the mountain resort of Gomismta.

The Ozurgeti Drama Theatre, founded in 1868 and named after Alexander Tsutsunava, is one of the largest theatres in Georgia and occupies a monumental 1962 building. The Ozurgeti History Museum holds more than 6,000 objects, including a sword said to have belonged to Napoleon. On the central square you can see the excavated ruins of an old bathhouse, and a 19th-century Gurieli palace is now the residence of the local bishop. The beaches of Shekvetili and Ureki are 20 to 30 km away.

Ozurgeti is first mentioned in the New Georgian Chronicles in 1578 and grew into the centre of the Principality of Guria and the home of its Gurieli rulers, until Russia annexed Guria in 1829. In the 19th century it became a hub of tea production. In 1934 the Soviet authorities renamed the town Makharadze, after the Georgian Bolshevik Filipp Makharadze, and it took back its old name in 1989.