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Tkibuli
ℹ️Practical info — Tkibuli
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🌤 Weather — 5 days
📍 Nearby
Sights nearby
💡 Tips
- Discover the remnants of its coal-mining past with dramatic Soviet-era architecture scattered around the town.
- Take a short trip to the nearby Shaori Reservoir, which is especially beautiful during the colorful autumn season.
- Catch a marshrutka from Kutaisi; the winding mountain road to Tkibuli provides great views.
- Look out for the old, rusty cable car stations once used by miners, which make for unique, eerie photography.
🍽 Food
The local variation of Georgian cheese bread; try it freshly baked from small bakeries around town.
Traditional pan-fried cornbread served with salty Imeretian cheese, a staple rustic meal.
A vegetable and walnut paste, commonly served as a delicious appetizer in local eateries.
🛍 Shopping · 🧘 Quiet spots
A good place to pick up fresh produce, Imeretian cheese, and locally grown Georgian black tea.
Look out for high-quality local honey sold at roadside stalls in the wooded areas around Tkibuli.
Located just outside town, this lake provides incredible tranquility and perfectly reflects the surrounding mountains.
Enjoy the silence during a walk through the dense deciduous forests that blanket the surrounding hills.
Water temperature…
Tkibuli, sometimes spelled Tqibuli, is a mining town of around 9,500 inhabitants in the Imereti region of western Georgia, some 35 kilometres north-east of Kutaisi at an elevation of about 500 metres. It was founded in the mid-19th century in a valley clad in dense beech and fir forests, following the discovery of rich coal seams. Already in the late tsarist period Tkibuli supplied coal to the railways and the manganese works at Chiatura; in Soviet times mining was greatly expanded and the town was considered the largest coal basin of the Caucasus. After steep decline in the 1990s, mining has partly revived, supplemented by forestry and hydropower from the Shaori reservoir. Highlights include the wooden miners' colonies, a technical museum with the remains of headframes, Soviet mosaics on schools and culture houses, and the medieval Mghvimevi cave monastery with its 13th-century rock-hewn churches. In the surrounding hills the Naparovani Nature Reserve, with deep gorges and subtropical mixed forests, invites hiking.
- Location: Georgia
- Top sights: Tkibuli Municipality · Vladimer Bochorishvili Stadium
- Nearby: Zestafoni (20 km)
- Population: ~7.957 (2025)
Best time to visit & climate
The most pleasant time to visit is Jun–Aug.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avg °C | -4 | -2 | 1 | 7 | 12 | 17 | 20 | 21 | 16 | 10 | 4 | -1 |
| Rain mm | 76 | 58 | 85 | 69 | 80 | 78 | 63 | 56 | 79 | 87 | 84 | 74 |
Geography
Facts
- Founded as a mining settlement in the mid-19th century.
- Located at an elevation of approximately 500 meters.
- Was once the largest coal basin in the entire Caucasus.
- Proximity to the Shaori reservoir for hydropower.
- Home to the medieval Mghvimevi cave monastery.
- Mining museum displays remains of historic headframes.
Explore nearby
Notable places around
Route planner — Car & Motorhome
Where do you start? We build the route here, with stops and country notes along the way.
© OpenStreetMap contributors · OpenRouteService
Sights in the town Tkibuli (2)
Frequently asked questions
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Tkibuli: where is it located?
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