Batumi

Batumi occupies a deep harbour on Georgia's southwestern Black Sea coast, below the Caucasus and only about twenty kilometres from Turkey. The site was an ancient Greek colony called Bathus, a name connected with a deep port. Under Hadrian it became a fortified Roman port, later serving within the worlds of Lazica and the Georgian monarchy. From 1010 a royal viceroy governed the town.

After the Georgian kingdom broke apart in the late fifteenth century, it passed to the princes of Guria. In 1444 a Burgundian coastal raiding expedition was ambushed while landing here, and its commander secured release through the emperor of Trebizond. Ottoman and Georgian rulers contested Batumi for generations. The port became an Ottoman provincial outlet during the eighteenth century.

Population and industry expanded rapidly. Heavy rain from the sea and nearby mountains makes this one of the wettest cities in the Caucasus, while beaches, a botanical garden and a sheltered waterfront shape the later city.