Kutaisi Botanical Garden

Kutaisi's Botanical Garden is a green, slightly wild park beside the Rioni, a short walk or taxi ride north of the city centre. Paths wander under tall trees past bamboo groves, palms, magnolias and conifers from around the world, mixed with native species of the Colchic forest such as box, chestnut and zelkova. It is a favourite spot for local families on hot afternoons, when the shade and the breeze off the river make it noticeably cooler than the streets around the market.

The best-known sight is a small chapel made inside the hollow trunk of a huge old oak, said to be several centuries old, with an icon and candles inside and room for only a few people at a time. Elsewhere you will find benches by the river and quiet corners for a picnic. It is not a manicured showpiece, but an hour here makes a calm break between Bagrati, the White Bridge and the bazaar.

The garden was founded in the 1840s, in the Russian imperial period, as a nursery and acclimatisation garden for plants from the Black Sea coast and further afield, and it later became a scientific garden. The chapel in the oak was consecrated more recently, after church life revived in the 1990s.