6 of the best places to experience Georgia's Soviet heritage

After a long spell as part of Tsarist Russia, Georgia’s brief period of independence after WWI was cut short by the invading Red Army in 1921. There followed 70 years of life in the USSR, during which time the architectural styles of the Soviet Union were unleashed upon the country.

Post-independence, Georgia has embraced tourism, enticing visitors with its beautiful scenery, medieval monasteries, and excellent food (and even more excellent wine). All that aside, though, the country has also been bequeathed a top-notch collection of distinctly Soviet architecture, which makes another lure for tourists keen to explore some of the finest examples of stylized socialist buildings to be found anywhere in the world. Here is a selection of Georgia’s best pieces of Soviet heritage, from utilitarian brutalist bank headquarters to ostentatious museums and holiday resorts.

1. Bank of Georgia headquarters, Tbilisi

Let’s not mess about here: when it comes to Soviet architecture in Georgia, the headquarters of the Bank of Georgia have to take the top spot. Found north of Tbilisi city center, this remarkable structure looks like a tower of blocks stacked carefully but somehow provocatively. Originally built in 1975 to house the Ministry of Highways, it’s notorious as a demonstration of the corruption rampant in Soviet Georgia: rather brazenly, the Deputy Minister of Highways commissioned himself as the architect. Even so, it represents some of the very best of Soviet brutalist design, making it a true one-of-a-kind and an essential stop for anyone interested in exploring Georgia’s 20th-century architecture.

Planning tip: The Bank of Georgia headquarters are best viewed from the parking lot on the southbound road on the west bank of the Kura River. If possible, time your visit for a weekend, when there will be fewer cars there, allowing uninterrupted views of the building.

2. Medea Sanatorium, Tskaltubo

Tourism during the Soviet era was often health-focused, with a visit to a sanatorium to enjoy spa treatments and take mineral waters being a highlight. In western Georgia, the town of Tskaltubo became a popular destination for tourists from all over the USSR, attracted by its plentiful mineral springs, with the result that the small settlement became packed with increasingly elaborate sanatoria. These grandiose buildings were built to impress, with huge cavernous halls, enormous pillars and dramatic frontages with a blocky neoclassical flavor.

The good times didn’t last: after the collapse of the USSR, Tskaltubo’s tourism industry crashed, and the majority of the sanatoria fell into disrepair. These splendid buildings are still there, most of them now derelict but with a majestic stateliness. The Medea Sanatorium is perhaps the grandest, and it’s possible to explore its corridors, stairways and dormitories, offering an evocative and somewhat haunting look back at a bygone era of mass tourism.

Planning tip: Medea is the best-known and the easiest to access of Tskaltubo’s sanatoria. Several of the other sanatoria in town can be explored too, but do bear in mind that many of these derelict buildings are home to persons displaced by the Abkhazian war in the early 1990s. You’ll usually be welcomed, but you should be respectful and ask permission to enter.

3. Stalin Museum, Gori

If you’re thinking about the Soviet Union, it probably won’t be long before Josef Stalin crosses your mind. The USSR’s longest-serving leader hailed from the Georgian town of Gori, which is now home to an enormous museum dedicated to Stalin. Built in the 1950s in grandiose style, the exterior resembles a cross between a Graeco-Roman temple and a Gothic castle, while the inside is packed with an astonishing collection of Stalin memorabilia. Nearby stands Stalin’s personal railway carriage, which he used throughout the Great Patriotic War, and – now entombed within another temple-like structure – the house in which he was born. The museum survived the USSR’s de-Stalinization program as well as Georgia’s independence, and continues to operate with a strange mixture of reverence and revulsion for one of the 20th century’s most murderous leaders.

Planning tip: Note that local opinion on Stalin remains ambivalent. Although his crimes are acknowledged, many in Gori are proud of Stalin and his leadership of the USSR. Whereas in much of the former Soviet Union, Stalin statues were removed fairly promptly after his death, there remained one standing in Gori center until 2010 – and even then, it was taken down during the night to avoid local outrage.

4. Expo, Tbilisi

Tbilisi’s Expo was constructed in the 1960s as Georgia’s premier exhibition space. Consisting of a small park dotted with eleven separate buildings all built in the Soviet modernism style, it was designed to impress, making it a great place to explore Soviet heritage. At the park’s entrance you’ll immediately spot the extravagant space-age curved archway of the main pavilion, overseen by an unmistakeably Soviet sculpture of a woman soaring toward the sky. For Soviet mosaics, check out the exterior wall of Hall 8, which is dominated by a fresco of three huge figures, including a cosmonaut. The Expo’s most unmissable sight, however, stands proudly outside Hall 7: a fantastically blocky silver statue of a man, woman and child holding examples of scientific progress in their hands and gazing optimistically into a bright future.

Detour: About 7km (4 miles) north, on the outskirts of Tbilisi, it’s also worth making a stop at the Chronicles of Georgia monument. This megalithic beast was begun in the Soviet period but not completed until post-independence, giving it a particularly unusual flavor: its many enormous pillars depict imagery of Georgian history, with those completed during the Soviet era emphasizing the secular, while the latter works are free to explore religious imagery.

5. Russian-Georgian Friendship Monument, Georgian Military Highway

Sat on a mountainous outcrop overlooking the Devil’s Valley, the Russian-Georgian Friendship Monument is one of the highlights of driving the Georgian Military Highway. Dating from 1983, this vast circle of concrete commemorates 200 years of almost uninterrupted Russian rule over Georgia. The interior walls are decorated with rich and colorful murals in delightful Soviet style, depicting scenes from both Georgian and Russian history. The views over the surrounding Caucasus mountains are an added bonus.

Detour: If you’re traveling along the Georgian Military Highway, don’t miss a stop at Ananuri, one of Georgia’s most iconic sights. This medieval fortified monastery sits on a vantage point above the Aragvi River and is extremely picturesque.

6. Octopus, Batumi

At first glance, the Black Sea city of Batumi seems to have shed its Soviet past in favor of glitzy modern architecture, but it doesn’t take more than a short walk along the seafront boulevard to find traces of the USSR. Fittingly for a seaside resort, it’s here that you’ll find one of the most outright fun pieces of Soviet heritage: the Batumi Octopus, an exuberant structure in the shape of a giant octopus, plus a starfish, seahorse and multiple fish, all coated in a riot of colorful mosaics. It was once used as a coffee shop and still intermittently opens as an ice-cream kiosk. Who said life in the USSR was all gray?