Hotel Tbilisi Tskaltubo
THE ABANDONED HOTEL IN GEORGIA
‘Hotel Tbilisi’ is one of the abandoned hotels in spa resort Tskaltubo in Georgia. The construction of the hotel finished in 1951. The big hotel was a popular place to stay. Today it is a home for refugees.
The hotelier built the seven-story high ‘Hotel Tbilisi’ close to the city center and within walking distance of the bathhouses. The city utilizes its thermal waters to treat about 70 diseases. The city arranged baths directly at the spring, so no hotel in Tskaltubo had its own therapy baths.
The hotel was designed by Dr. V.K. Oltarzhevski and B.A. Sobolevski as an example of late Stalinist architecture. The building had a capacity of 732 beds. Major reconstruction works took place in 1963-65, when the back façade was attached. Starting in 1984, three years of necessary repairs started.
Soviet Union
Tskaltubo was one of the most popular resorts in the former Soviet Union. So when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the town of Tskaltubo was mostly abandoned. Meanwhile, the hotels and sanatoria were left empty to crumble and decay.
Today, refugees from the nearby Abkhazia region occupy this hotel, which is now one of Tskaltubo’s disused buildings. The War in Abkhazia from 1992 to 1993 involved Georgian forces, Abkhaz separatists, the Russian armed forces, and North Caucasian militants. As a result, authorities housed about 9 thousand refugees in Tskaltubo. Although initially intended as a temporary solution, these makeshift apartments have now become permanent homes for new generations of families 25 years later. The Hotel Tbilisi building is in a terrible state today. I explored the deserted spa city back in 2019.
