Batumi – the Las Vegas of the Black Sea

17 June 2022

After having visited 10 countries within just three weeks, it was high time to chill so we packed a travel bag and took the 4 hour train ride west from Tbilisi to Batumi, on the Black Sea Coast.

Our original intention was just to park ourselves down by the beach and watch the waves roll in while eating our ice-creams but to our surprise, Batumi had a lot more to offer, as we were to discover over the coming week. It is actually quite a charismatic place with a charming Old Town, a 7km long beach and a vast and beautifully maintained corniche. A popular summer retreat in Soviet times due to its sub-tropical climate, it is also an important seaport with a busy harbor.

Batumi is also undergoing a construction boom, with new hotels and tower blocks transforming its skyline in recent years, even if the renovated charm of its original belle époque architecture from a century ago is hard to beat. It is also nicknamed "The Las Vegas of the Black Sea" with casinos everywhere, a magnet especially for its many Turkish visitors (gambing is forbidden in nearby Turkey).

Here are some of our own personal highlights.

The excellent Archaeological Museum showcases some of the many valuable archaeological discoveries made in this autonomous region, known as Adjara, with its own flag, dialect (which borrows some words from Turkish), and cuisine. The main room upstairs starts with the remains of hominids from between 1.7 and 1.8 million years ago and moves through impressive Bronze Age daggers, Iron Age jewellery, Hellenistic pottery and Roman artefacts. Downstairs is an impressive display of Byzantine gold.

The Boulevard is the city’s pride and joy. Laid out in 1884 and stretching for 7 kilometres along the seafront, it’s one of the oldest parts of Batumi and one of the largest parks of its kind in Europe. It comprises a series of walking and cycling paths that thread their way through manicured gardens, past recreation zones and clusters of cafes. Of the dozens of sculptures scattered along the seafront, including perhaps the most famous one, ‘Ali & Nino’, our favorites were the «Flip-flops on Eggs» and the «Octopus», an impressive Soviet-era mosaic.

Most of the buildings in the Old Town date to the end of the 19th century, but some look a lot older. The cobbled streets running east-west are rich with Art Nouveau facades, Art Deco corner buildings and magnificent old houses with carved wooden doors and wrought iron balconies. Our favorite – in addition to the modest guest house there where we stayed - was the Apollo Theatre, an Art Nouveau building and probably Batumi’s most distinctive facade.

The ostentatious buildings along Batumi’s waterfront are a complete juxtaposition to the classical facades in the Old Town. The strange silhouette of Batumi’s skyline is one of the reasons it’s been nicknamed ‘the Las Vegas of the Caucasus’.

In the 19th century, Batumi’s architects and benefactors took their cues from the West when moulding their city into a picture of European elegance. Fast forward to a future where city planners have let their imaginations run wild, and every building is a whacky utopian feat of glass and steel. Modern civic buildings and highrise apartments range from the artful to the downright bizarre.

Here are a couple of the most iconic Batumi buildings you need to see to believe:

· Alphabetic Tower: Probably the single strangest piece of Batumi architecture, Alphabetic Tower is a monument to the Georgian language. Characters from the alphabet wrap around the scaffold-like structure, culminating in a giant metallic orb. An elevator runs up the middle of the tower and there’s an observation deck at the top.

· Batumi Tower: At 35-storeys high, this is Batumi’s tallest building. It’s immediately recognisable because of the small gold-coloured Ferris Wheel embedded in the upper level (yes, really).

A unique Batumi experience is to pay a visit to the Batumi Fish Market. You can order your fish there and wait while they fry it up for you. We preferred to head out back to one of the restaurants on the waterfront, where we ordered an excellent sea bass just caught that morning.

No visit would be complete without a trip to the localk market, in this case

agricultural market (Batumi Bazaar). The vibrant display of fresh produce, nuts, cheese and dried fruits is a window onto the area’s culinary culture.

Visit the Sameba Church (aka Holy Trinity Cathedral) for a great panoramic view of Batumi. We took a cheap taxi ride up and the driver was still waiting for us when we started walking back down from the church an hour later.

Batumi sunsets are apparently the best in Georgia and honestly some of the most vivid we’ve seen anywhere in the world. It may be due to the combination of the glistening Black Sea reflection and the thick clouds that usually appear around sundown.

There was no better way to put a cap on our short time in Batumi before heading back to the capital.

Insider Tip: Do not stay at the Orbi City Hotel Towers unless you are a fan of Soviet 1950’s mental institution architectural and decor styles (in addition it was located plumb in the middle of a building site). We took one horrified look and then made a quick (non-refundable) escape before the fearsome-looking female "wardens" (and possibly ex-shot putters) locked up for the night.