Surami

Surami is a small town at the western edge of Shida Kartli, where the road from Tbilisi begins to climb the Likhi range towards western Georgia. In the 19th and 20th centuries it was a climatic resort: its dry, pine-scented air was recommended for people with lung complaints, and sanatoria and summer villas spread up the wooded slopes. Today most travellers know it from the rows of stalls along the old road selling nazuki, the sweet spiced bread baked in clay ovens, and from the ruined fortress on the rock above the town.

The Ukrainian poet Lesya Ukrainka spent much of her last decade in Georgia for her health and died in Surami in 1913; the house where she stayed is now a small memorial museum. The town makes a pleasant short break on the way to Borjomi or Kutaisi: buy warm nazuki, walk up to the fortress and stroll among the old villas. A few guesthouses offer a quiet night under the pines.

Surami grew around its fortress on the road between eastern and western Georgia. When the railway from Tbilisi to the Black Sea crossed the Likhi range here in the 1870s, the town became easy to reach and developed as a resort, with villas and sanatoria in the pine woods. Lesya Ukrainka died here on 1 August 1913, and her house later became a memorial museum.