Batumi

Batumi, Georgia’s second-largest city, serves as the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara. It lies on the Black Sea coast in the country’s southwest, just north of the Turkish border, in a subtropical zone at the base of the Caucasus Mountains. The city’s economy depends heavily on tourism and gambling—earning it the nickname “The Las Vegas of the Black Sea”—but it also functions as a key seaport, with industries including shipbuilding, food processing, and light manufacturing. Since 2010, Batumi has seen extensive redevelopment, with modern high-rises rising alongside restored 19th-century buildings in its historic Old Town.

The city occupies the site of the ancient Greek colony of Bathus (or Bathys), meaning “deep harbor.” Under Emperor Hadrian, it became a fortified Roman port, later abandoned for the fortress of Petra built during Justinian I’s reign. Roman-Byzantine forces garrisoned it, and it was formally part of the kingdom of Lazica until briefly occupied by Arabs, who did not hold it. In 780, Lazica passed to the kingdom of Abkhazia through a dynastic union, which later led to the unification of the Georgian monarchy in the 11th century. From 1010, a viceroy of the Georgian king governed Batumi. After the Georgian kingdom dissolved in the late 15th century, the city came under the princes of Guria, a western Georgian principality under the kings of Imereti.

In 1444, a Burgundian flotilla, having failed in a crusade against the Ottoman Empire, turned to piracy along the eastern Black Sea coast. The knight Geoffroy de Thoisy led a landing to raid Vaty—as Europeans then called Batumi—but was ambushed and captured. He was released through the mediation of Emperor John IV of Trebizond.

Under Prince Kakhaber Gurieli in the 15th century, the Ottomans conquered Batumi and its district but did not hold them. A century later, they returned in force, defeating Georgian armies at Sokhoista. Georgians recaptured Batumi several times: in 1546 by Prince Rostom Gurieli (who soon lost it), and again in 1609 by Mamia II Gurieli. In 1703, Batumi became part of the Ottoman Empire once more. Over the next 150 years, it grew into a provincial port serving Ottoman hinterlands on the eastern Black Sea. Islamization of the previously Christian region began but was largely reversed after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, when the area was annexed to Russian Imperial Georgia.

Batumi was the last Black Sea port Russia annexed during its conquest of the Caucasus. Under the Treaty of San Stefano (ratified March 23, 1878), the Ottoman Empire ceded it to Russia. Russian forces occupied it on August 28, 1878, and the town was declared a free port until 1886. It served as the center of a special military district until June 12, 1883, when it was incorporated into the Kutaisi Governorate. On June 1, 1903, the Batum Okrug, along with the Artvin Okrug, became the Batum Oblast, directly administered by the Viceroy of the Caucasus.

The city’s expansion began with the Batumi–Tiflis–Baku Transcaucasus Railway, completed in 1883, and the Baku–Batumi pipeline, opened in 1907. Batumi became Russia’s chief Black Sea oil port. Its population doubled in 20 years, from 8,671 in 1882 to 12,000 in 1889, reaching 16,000 by 1902, with 1,000 working at Baron Rothschild’s Caspian and Black Sea Oil Company refinery. In the late 1880s and after, over 7,400 Doukhobor emigrants sailed from Batumi to Canada, funded by Quakers and Tolstoyans, after the imperial government allowed them to leave due to conflicts over military service.

In 1901, Joseph Stalin lived in Batumi organizing strikes. On March 3, 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk returned the city to the Ottoman Empire, confirmed by the Treaty of Batum in June 1918 between the Ottomans and the Democratic Republic of Georgia. After World War I, the British controlled Batumi from December 1918 until July 1920, when it was transferred to the Democratic Republic of Georgia, which granted Adjara autonomy. In 1921, Kemal Atatürk ceded northern Adjara, including Batumi, to the Bolsheviks, on condition of autonomy for its Muslim population.

When Georgia regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Aslan Abashidze became head of Adjara’s governing council and held power through the 1990s, turning Adjara into his personal fiefdom while keeping it part of Georgia, unlike Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In May 2004, after mass protests in Batumi, he fled to Russia, ending the 2004 Adjara crisis.

Today, Batumi is one of Georgia’s main port cities, capable of handling 80,000-ton tankers for shipping oil and other materials.