Batumi Archaeological Museum

The Batumi Archaeological Museum is a compact museum in the city centre that tells the long story of the Adjara coast through objects dug from its soil. It is often described as one of the oldest museums in Georgia, and it makes a good counterweight to Batumi's glass towers and casinos. The displays move from Colchian pottery and bronze work to the centuries when Greek traders and then Roman soldiers arrived on this shore. Amphorae, jewellery, coins and grave goods show how local Colchians lived alongside newcomers from around the Black Sea.

The best reason to come is context. Much of the material comes from sites you can visit nearby, such as the Roman fort at Gonio, Byzantine Petra at Tsikhisdziri and the Pichvnari cemeteries near Kobuleti, where Colchian and Greek burials lie side by side. Seeing the finds first makes those ruins far easier to read. The museum is small, so an hour is plenty, and it is a sensible plan for one of Batumi's many rainy days.

The museum's subject is the deep past of this coast. In the first millennium BC it belonged to Colchis, and Greek traders settled next to local communities at places such as Pichvnari. Rome garrisoned the fort of Apsaros at Gonio by the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, and in the 6th century the emperor Justinian built Petra at Tsikhisdziri to control Lazica. Finds from all of these periods have come out of excavations in Adjara.