Open Air Museum of Ethnography

Houses from every region by Turtle Lake

The open-air museum on the slope by Turtle Lake was founded on 27 April 1966 by the ethnographer Giorgi Chitaia; since 2004 it has been part of the Georgian National Museum and carries his name.

The houses here were not built anew: real peasant homesteads from Svaneti, Kakheti, Imereti, Kartli, Adjara and other provinces were taken apart on the spot, carried here and reassembled — with their utensils, looms, qvevri sunk in the floor and farm buildings.

So the whole country stands on one hill: a Svan tower beside a Kakhetian marani, a darbazi with its stepped wooden dome, a water mill. The walk takes a couple of hours and stands in for a tour of the regions when there is no time for one.