Lined by art installations, wine bars and cafes, Batumi’s boulevard stretches for seven kilometres along the black sands and pebble beaches of the Black Sea . The snow-capped peaks of the Lesser Caucasus Mountains tower over Soviet-style apartment blocks, and baroque buildings stand next to wacky modern architecture, such as the 130-metre-tall Alphabetic Tower, shaped like a double helix. Once a favoured Soviet beach resort, Batumi fell off the map with the collapse of the USSR .
As an independent Georgia shook off its Soviet past, an abundance of casinos, high end hotels and quirky boutique properties began transforming Batumi into the affordable Vegas of the Black Sea. Read Next Seven summer holiday hurdles, and how to deal with them The pound stretches far in the city, with £1 equal to 3.54 Georgian Lari (GEL), and five-star hotel stays starting from £130 a night.
“Batumi’s story began with the sea,” says tour guide Salome Chikashua as we gazed over the harbour. “The sea is everything to us. If you’re born here, you can’t live anywhere else in Georgia .
” Georgia’s second-largest city by population is the capital of the southeastern province of Adjara, and Chikashua explained how ancient Greeks founded Batumi in the 6th century BC. As legend has it, Jason and the Argonauts passed through on their quasi-mythical search for the Golden Fleece, a story historians believe was inspired by the practice of using sheepskins to sieve rivers for gold. The Romans ca.
