Tsageri Historical Museum

The archaeology of Lechkhumi and Kvemo Svaneti

The museum in Tsageri was founded in 1937 by the painter and teacher Varlam Makharoblidze, who sought out and bought much of the collection himself; the permanent display, with sections of natural history and archaeology, opened in October 1943.

Today the holdings run to some eleven thousand items, mostly the archaeology of Lechkhumi and Kvemo Svaneti: a bronze horseman, a bronze hoard, Colchian and oriental axes, a Hittite bit, Stone Age tools. The coin cabinet reaches a coin of Alexander the Great and a gold stater of Lysimachus; there are church objects of the 17th–19th centuries and rare photographs of Lechkhumi by Dmitri Ermakov and Alexander Roinashvili.

On 2 December 1996 a fire broke out and part of the collection was lost, though most survived. In 2000 the museum was given its founder's name, in 2011 the municipality restored the burnt building and the collection came back. The museum has branches: the house-museums of Lado Asatiani, Severian Isiani and Archil Gelovani in nearby villages.