Poti

Poti is Samegrelo's window on the sea: a flat, working port city of roughly 40,000 people where the Rioni, the great river of western Georgia, flows into the Black Sea. Together with Batumi it handles most of the country's sea trade, and the cranes, rail yards and free industrial zone of the port dominate the waterfront. Few travellers stay long, but the centre is easy to walk, with straight 19th-century streets, a central square around the cathedral and an embankment along the river. Poti is also the natural base for boat trips into Kolkheti National Park, which begins at the edge of town.

The landmark is Poti Cathedral, built in 1906 and 1907 as a smaller version of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, its wide central dome visible from across the square. It went up while Niko Nikoladze, one of the leading Georgian thinkers of his day, was mayor and was turning Poti into a modern port. Not far away stands a cast-iron lighthouse assembled in 1864. Greek writers placed the colony of Phasis on this coast, and in the legend the Argonauts rowed up the Phasis, today's Rioni, to seek the Golden Fleece.

Greek traders from Miletus set up a trading post called Phasis near the river mouth in the 6th or 5th century BC, and its exact site is still debated. Much later the Ottomans kept a fortress here, which Russian forces took in 1828. Modern Poti grew with harbour works in the 19th century and the railway to Tbilisi, opened in 1872 as the first line in Georgia. Under Mayor Niko Nikoladze, from 1894 to 1912, the town gained much of its modern harbour and its cathedral.