Kutaisi and Batumi – Heritage and Black Sea

Gelati was medieval Georgia's Oxford: an academy founded in 1106 by King David the Builder, where philosophers translated and taught beneath golden mosaics. The great Virgin mosaic of the main church survives, one of the finest in the Caucasus, alongside layers of superb frescoes. David himself lies buried under the gateway stone, so that all who enter step over their king. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and, for many travellers, the most moving building in western Georgia.

Batumi is Georgia's exhale: palm trees, a seven-kilometre seaside boulevard, belle-epoque facades and a skyline of playful towers. The moving steel statue of Ali and Nino embraces and parts every ten minutes above the harbour. On the cliff north of town, the Botanical Garden layers subtropical forests from around the world above the sea. Add fish markets, adjaruli khachapuri and long sunsets, and the Black Sea earns its riviera title.

Behind Batumi's beaches rises another Adjara: rain-fed mountains where Ottoman-era stone bridges arch over rushing rivers and villages cling to tea-green slopes. In Khulo a tiny cable car strings across an entire gorge, one of the most improbable commutes in Europe. Waterfalls, highland pastures and the Goderdzi pass complete a landscape that could not be more different from the coast twenty kilometres away. This is the green heart of the Georgian subtropics.