Three days in Batumi: palm trees, minarets and a skyline that got carried away
Two nights on the Georgian Black Sea: an Ottoman old town under glass towers, a Roman fort near the Turkish border, one of the great botanical gardens of the Caucasus, and a beach made entirely of pebbles.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Batumi
- Places
- 7 across 3 days
Adjara spent three centuries under Ottoman rule and only joined the Russian empire in 1878, which is why the seaside capital of Orthodox Georgia has a working mosque two streets from its cathedral and a large Muslim population that nobody finds remarkable. Then oil arrived. The pipeline from Baku ended here, the Rothschilds and the Nobel brothers built refineries, and for about twenty years before the revolution Batumi was one of the richest ports on the Black Sea.
What you see now is the third act. From about 2007 the government poured money into the seafront and commissioned buildings from anybody who would answer the telephone, so the boulevard is lined with casinos, a 130 metre tower with the Georgian alphabet spiralled up it, a copy of the Doge's Palace, and a university tower with a Ferris wheel built into its side. It is ridiculous and it is enormous fun, and behind it the low Ottoman and Belle Epoque streets of the old town are still there and still full of people playing backgammon.
Two nights is enough unless you came to swim. It gives you an evening on the boulevard, a full day for the botanical garden and the Roman fort down the coast, and a last morning for the museums that explain how a malarial swamp became an oil port.
Highlights
- A ridge 250 metres above the city, reached in ten minutes and best at dusk
- Gonio, a Roman garrison fort down the coast with eighteen towers still standing
- A botanical garden of a hundred hectares laid out on a cliff above the sea in 1912
- Buying your own fish at the market and having the place next door cook it
- The Orta Jame mosque of 1866, still the only one in the old town
Where to stay
Batumi, two nights
The city is a grid between the port and the sea. The old town, roughly the ten blocks around Europe Square and the Piazza, holds the churches, the mosque, the museums and most of the good eating. The boulevard runs the length of the shore in front of it, and the towers and casinos stand along the northern end near the port.
Stay in the old town rather than in one of the seafront blocks. The beach is three minutes away either way and the difference at dinner is considerable.
Adjaran food is its own thing. The local khachapuri is the boat-shaped one with a raw egg and a slab of butter dropped into the melted cheese at the table, and there is more dairy, more walnut and more fish here than in the rest of the country.
Day by day
Day 1 in Batumi
Europe Square, the old mosque, and a cable car at dusk
Start on Europe Square under the statue of Medea, who was the daughter of the king of Colchis and the reason Jason got the Golden Fleece out of the country at all. She is holding it up, on a column, in front of a square of nineteenth century facades painted in ice-cream colours. The surrounding streets are the reason to come: two and three storey houses with iron balconies, put up when the oil money arrived, restored in the last fifteen years and still lived in.
Walk five minutes north to the Orta Jame, built in 1866 and the only mosque left in central Batumi. It is small, wooden inside, painted in greens and reds, and the men outside will wave you in if you take your shoes off and cover up. It matters more than its size suggests: Adjara is the one part of Georgia where a large share of the population is Muslim, a direct legacy of Ottoman rule that ended only in 1878.
Finish on the cable car. It lifts you from behind the boulevard to a ridge about 250 metres up in a few minutes, with the whole city, the port and the coast laid out below. Go for the last hour of daylight and stay for the lights, then walk the boulevard back into town past the steel statue of two lovers that slides through itself and reassembles every few minutes.
- 15:30
Medea statue
HistoricMedea and the Golden Fleece on a column in Europe Square, at the centre of the restored nineteenth century old town. Ten minutes to look, an hour to wander the streets around it.
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- 17:30
Old Mosque
ReligiousThe Orta Jame of 1866, painted and wooden inside, and the only mosque in the old town. Shoes off, shoulders and knees covered, and avoid the Friday midday prayer.
- 19:00
Cable car
OtherThe cable car from the seafront to the ridge above the city, about ten minutes each way with a restaurant and a viewing terrace at the top. Best in the hour before sunset.
With more time: The musical fountain on the boulevard runs after dark in season and is better than that description suggests. The Piazza, a mosaic-floored square of arcades built in 2009 to look four hundred years older, is where the bars are; it is completely fake and completely enjoyable.
Day 2 in Batumi
A cliff-top garden, a Roman fort, and fish you choose yourself
The botanical garden is nine kilometres north at Green Cape, planted from 1912 by the geographer Andrey Krasnov on a headland that drops straight into the sea. It runs to about a hundred hectares divided into regions of the world, so you walk out of a Japanese section into Himalayan bamboo and then into Mexican cactus, with the Black Sea underneath the whole way. It takes three hours at a minimum and rewards four. Buses and marshrutkas run there from the centre in twenty minutes, and there is a small train inside for anybody who would rather not do the climbs.
In the afternoon go the other way down the coast to Gonio. The Romans put a garrison here in the first century to hold the mouth of the Chorokhi valley, and the rectangle of wall with its eighteen towers has been held since by Byzantines, Genoese, Ottomans and Russians in turn. Inside it is mostly excavated foundations and grass, with a grave in one corner that tradition assigns to the apostle Matthias, and the Turkish border is a few kilometres further on.
Come back for dinner at the fish market by the port, which is the best meal in Batumi and requires a system. You buy the fish from the stalls by the kilo, take it to one of the restaurants ranged around the outside, and pay them a few lari to grill or fry it. Point at whatever came in that morning.
- 09:30
Batumi Botanical Garden
NatureA hundred hectares of subtropical planting on a cliff north of the city, divided into the regions of the world it was collected from. Three hours minimum, and the ticket is dear by Georgian standards and worth it.
- 15:00
Remains of Gonio Fortress
HistoricA Roman fort of the first century down the coast towards Sarpi, with eighteen towers and a curtain wall still standing. An hour, plus half an hour each way by minibus.
- 19:00
Fish market
EatBuy your fish by the kilo at the market stalls, then hand it to a restaurant around the edge to cook for a few lari. Cheaper and better than anything on the boulevard.
With more time: If you would rather go up into the mountains than down the coast, the arched stone bridge and waterfall at Makhuntseti are about forty minutes inland up the Adjaristsqali valley and make an easy half day, with a longer hike behind the falls for anybody with boots.
Day 3 in Batumi
Oil money and Colchian gold, before the bus
Two small museums explain the city. The Nobel brothers museum, out towards the refinery district, covers the twenty years when Batumi was the western end of one of the first long-distance oil pipelines built anywhere, pumped over the Caucasus from Baku and shipped from here to Europe. The Rothschilds owned one refinery and the Nobels another, the docks were among the busiest on the Black Sea, and a young Stalin worked here as an agitator and organised a strike that got him his first arrest.
The archaeological museum in the centre is smaller, better labelled than most in Georgia, and full of the thing this coast was famous for before oil: Colchian bronze and gold, classical pottery, and coins from every empire that ever traded through here.
Then walk the boulevard one more time before you go. It is the best public space in the country and it is entirely free.
- 10:00
The Nobel Brothers Batumi Technological Museum
CultureThe oil boom in one building: Nobel and Rothschild machinery, photographs of the port at its height, and the pipeline that made the city. An hour, and check the opening times before you set off.
- 12:00
Archaeological Museum
HistoricColchian metalwork, classical vases and coins, well explained in English by helpful staff. An hour, though the opening hours are not always the ones on the door.
With more time: With longer, the Armenian cathedral of 1885 sits at an angle to the street grid in the middle of the old town, and the seafront ferris wheel gives you the same view as the cable car for a fraction of the effort.
Before you go
Getting in and getting around
Batumi has its own airport south of the city with flights from Istanbul, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Baku, Dubai and much of the former Soviet Union, and it is close enough to the Turkish border that Turkish domestic flights to Hopa are sometimes the cheaper route. Overland, marshrutkas run to Tbilisi in six or seven hours and Kutaisi in about two; the train to Tbilisi is slower on paper, more comfortable in practice, and runs overnight.
The centre is flat and small and the seafront boulevard runs about seven kilometres, which makes the BatumVelo bike share the best way to cover it. City buses need a Batumi Card; marshrutkas take cash. Sarpi on the Turkish border is a twenty minute minibus ride for a couple of lari, and the border crossing itself is a piece of architecture worth the trip.
Weather, and what it does to the plan
Batumi gets around 2,500 millimetres of rain a year, which is roughly three times London and the reason the hills behind the city are covered in tea plantations and subtropical forest. Showers are frequent, heavy and short at any time of year. Winters are mild, August averages a shade over 23 degrees, and the sea is warm from June to October.
The beach is pebbles rather than sand. Bring something to sit on and something to swim in that is not flip flops, and expect the shelf to drop away steeply a few metres out.
One warning
Batumi is safe and the police are visible, but organised begging using small children is a genuine problem around the Piazza and the streets just south of it, and it is more persistent than in Tbilisi. Keep your pockets closed and do not hand over money in the street.
Batumi rewards a low-effort visit. One evening for the old town and the ridge above it, one full day split between the garden and the fort, one morning for the museums and the boulevard, and the fish market twice if you have any sense.
It is also the natural end of a run west from Tbilisi: Kutaisi and its monasteries are two hours back up the road, and the Turkish border is twenty minutes the other way.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Batumi worth visiting?
- Yes, for two or three nights, and for reasons that have little to do with the beach. The old town, the botanical garden, the food and the sheer oddity of the new skyline are the draw. If you want Mediterranean sand and clear water, this is not that coast.
- When is the best time to go to Batumi?
- June and September. July and August are hot, crowded and expensive, with the whole region on holiday here. May and October are quiet and green, and it rains in every month, so bring a jacket whatever the forecast says.
- How do you get from Tbilisi to Batumi?
- The train is the sensible option, about five to six hours on the fast service, with reserved seats and a proper carriage. Marshrutkas take six or seven and leave when full. Flying takes an hour but the schedules are thin.
- Can you visit Turkey from Batumi?
- Easily. The border at Sarpi is twenty minutes down the coast by minibus and open around the clock, and the Turkish town of Hopa is another half hour beyond it. Check your own visa position first, and expect a queue at weekends.
- Is the beach in Batumi any good?
- It is clean, central and made of grey pebbles, with a steep shelf and no shade. Locals go north to Kvariati and Gonio for clearer water, which are both on the Sarpi minibus route.