Tskaltubo: Stalin’s bathhouse and the ghost sanatoriums

By Prof. Giorgi Pkhakadze, MD, MPH, PhD · 15/09/2026

Updated 23 October 2026

Ten minutes from Kutaisi, the road enters a park of enormous old trees and, among them, buildings that make no sense: neoclassical palaces with columns three storeys high, curved colonnades, grand staircases, all of it empty, windows gone, trees growing through the porticoes. This was Tskaltubo, the Soviet Union’s most prestigious spa, and it still is a spa; it is also a monument to the way empires end.

The water

Tskaltubo sits on radon-carbonate springs at a constant 33 to 35 degrees — warm enough to bathe in without heating, mildly radioactive, and long believed to cure arthritis, circulatory and skin complaints. The Georgians had used them for centuries. In the 1920s the new Soviet state, which took spa medicine seriously, decided to build here the largest balneological resort in the USSR.

The town

Between 1930 and 1960 Tskaltubo was laid out as a garden city: a circular park with nine bathhouses at its centre, each numbered, each a temple of marble and mosaic, and around the park twenty-odd sanatoriums, each belonging to a Soviet ministry or union — the Railway Workers, the Metallurgists, the Ministry of Defence — each a palace in the Stalinist classical style, with dining halls for five hundred, cinemas, libraries and gardens. A direct train ran from Moscow. Workers came on state vouchers for three-week cures; at its height, 125,000 a year. Bathhouse No. 6 had a private wing for Stalin, who came from Tbilisi; his marble bath and the mosaic of his motorcade are still there, and Bathhouse 6 still operates.

What happened

1991. The Union ended, the vouchers ended, the trains stopped. In 1993 the sanatoriums filled again — with 9,000 refugees from the war in Abkhazia, who were housed in the ballrooms and dining halls and, thirty years later, some of them are still there, curtains in the windows of the Sanatorium Medea and washing on the balconies of the Metallurgists. The rest decayed. Tskaltubo became one of the world’s great abandoned landscapes: colonnades in the mist, spiral staircases open to the sky, mosaics of Soviet athletes fading under the rain. Photographers came, then urban explorers, then everyone.

Now

The town is coming back. Several bathhouses are open — you can take the radon waters for a few lari in Bathhouse 6 or the renovated Bathhouse 2, among a clientele of Georgian pensioners and curious foreigners. The Tskaltubo Spa Resort and the Legends hotel have restored two sanatoriums to something like their original grandeur, and the government has begun selling the others for renovation. Go soon: in ten years it will be a resort again, and the strangeness will be gone.

Practical

The abandoned buildings are unfenced and unsafe — floors missing, stairs unsupported. Look from the outside, or enter only the ground floors with care. Respect the people still living there. The park is beautiful in itself: a walk of an hour under the plane trees takes you past the grandest façades.

See it with GTour

Tskaltubo is the afternoon of day two on the Kutaisi & Western Georgia three-day tour, after Gelati and the Prometheus cave, with a bath in the radon water for anyone who wants one.

This story in Georgian — ქართულად: shenidasveneba.ge

Quick answers

What is Tskaltubo and why was it famous? Tskaltubo is a spa town near Kutaisi in Georgia, built on radon-carbonate springs that flow at a constant 33 to 35 degrees. It became the Soviet Union's most prestigious spa resort, drawing up to 125,000 visitors a year at its height for state-sponsored cures.

What were the healing properties attributed to Tskaltubo's waters? The radon-carbonate springs are mildly radioactive and warm enough to bathe in without heating. They were long believed to cure arthritis, circulatory problems, and skin complaints, and Georgians had used them for centuries before the Soviet era.

How was the town developed during the Soviet period? Between 1930 and 1960, Tskaltubo was built as a garden city with a circular park containing nine numbered bathhouses at its center, surrounded by about twenty sanatoriums. Each sanatorium belonged to a different Soviet ministry or union, such as the Railway Workers or Metallurgists, and featured Stalinist classical architecture with dining halls, cinemas, and libraries.

Did Stalin have a connection to Tskaltubo? Yes, Stalin visited Tskaltubo from Tbilisi and had a private wing in Bathhouse No. 6. His marble bath and a mosaic of his motorcade are still preserved there, and Bathhouse 6 continues to operate today.

Why did Tskaltubo fall into ruin? After the Soviet Union ended in 1991, the state vouchers and trains that brought visitors stopped. In 1993, the sanatoriums were repurposed to house 9,000 refugees from the war in Abkhazia, while the rest of the buildings were left to decay, creating one of the world's great abandoned landscapes.

Are people still living in the abandoned sanatoriums? Yes, some Abkhazian war refugees who moved into the sanatoriums in 1993 still live there thirty years later. Curtains can be seen in the windows of the Sanatorium Medea and washing hangs on the balconies of the Metallurgists sanatorium.

Is it safe to explore Tskaltubo's abandoned buildings, and what is the town's future? The abandoned buildings are unfenced and unsafe, with missing floors and unsupported stairs, so visitors should view them from outside or only enter ground floors carefully. The town is being restored, with several bathhouses reopened and two sanatoriums renovated by the Tskaltubo Spa Resort and Legends hotel, so visitors are encouraged to go soon before the resort is fully revived.

Photo: Radosław Botev / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 pl