Tsageri

Tsageri is the main town of Lechkhumi, a small, quiet place of about 1,000 people at 475 m on the right bank of the Tskhenistskali River, a tributary of the Rioni. It lies on the route from Kutaisi into Kvemo Svaneti, and few foreign travellers stop. Those who do find a pleasant town ringed by wooded hills, a cathedral that was once the seat of a bishopric, a monastery dedicated to St Maximus the Confessor, and the Tsageri Local Museum, which holds thousands of archaeological finds from Lechkhumi and Kvemo Svaneti.

Near town are the ruins of Muri fortress, often identified as the place where Maximus the Confessor died in exile in 662, and the Khvamli caves, a national monument said to have hidden the treasury of Georgian kings. Lechkhumi is also wine country: villages in the area produce Tvishi, a semi-sweet white from Tsolikouri, and the rare red Usakhelouri. Tsageri works well as a stop between Kutaisi and Lentekhi.

In medieval Georgia Tsageri was an episcopal see, and the early 18th-century geographer Vakhushti praised its cathedral, though later restorations changed its design and its wall paintings were lost. Nearby Muri fortress is traditionally linked with the theologian Maximus the Confessor, who died in exile in 662. Under Russian rule Tsageri was the centre of the Lechkhumi district of Kutaisi Governorate, and it became a town in 1968. It remains the seat of the bishop of Tsageri and Lentekhi.