By Prof. Giorgi Pkhakadze, MD, MPH, PhD · 15/09/2026
The name is a marketing decision, and a good one. Prometheus, in the Greek myth, was chained to a rock in the Caucasus for giving fire to humans; Georgians have their own version, Amirani, chained inside Mount Kazbek. Neither has anything to do with a cave in Imereti. But when the Kumistavi cave near Tskaltubo was opened to visitors in 2011, it needed a name that a foreigner would remember, and it got one. Now everyone calls it Prometheus, and everyone comes.
What it is
A karst cave system in the limestone hills west of Kutaisi, discovered in 1984 and mapped over the following decades — some eleven kilometres of passages, of which 1.4 kilometres are open, on a concrete walkway with handrails and coloured lighting. Six halls follow one another, each larger than the last: stalactites hanging in curtains, stalagmites the size of trees, flowstone like frozen waterfalls, and a ceiling that disappears into the dark. At the bottom an underground river runs, and in summer, when the water is high enough, the tour ends with a short boat ride out through the last chamber to daylight.
The lights
The cave is lit theatrically — reds, greens, blues, changing slowly, with music in the largest hall. Geologists sigh; children adore it; most adults decide within a minute that they don’t mind. If you want to see the rock as it is, ask the guide to pause the show for a moment in the great hall; the natural cream and grey of the calcite is, in its own way, more impressive.
Practical
The temperature is a constant 14 degrees, in July as in January — bring a layer. The walkway is 1.4 kilometres with about 600 steps, gently up and down, and takes an hour; it is fine for children and for anyone who can manage stairs, and not for wheelchairs. Tours run every half hour or so with a guide in Georgian, Russian or English. The boat is extra and seasonal. There is a café and a good view of the Imeretian hills at the entrance. The cave is fifteen minutes from Tskaltubo and twenty-five from Kutaisi.
The neighbours
Imereti is riddled with karst. Sataplia, ten kilometres away, is smaller but has dinosaur footprints in the rock and a glass-floored viewpoint over the plain. The Okatse and Martvili canyons, an hour west, are the river version of the same limestone — deep, green, with walkways and boats. All four make a day, which is exactly what the tour is.
See it with GTour
Prometheus opens the Martvili & Okatse canyons + Prometheus cave day from Kutaisi, and is the second day of the Kutaisi & Western Georgia three-day tour.
ქართულად: პრომეთეს მღვიმე — მითი, ჯაჭვები და რა არის სინამდვილეში მიწისქვეშ
