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Zestafoni

Plizio editorial teamUpdated: Jun 2026Data Sources

City

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Practical info — Zestafoni

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🌤 Weather — 5 days

📍 Nearby

Sights nearby

💡 Tips

A major industrial center, best known as a transit hub with a large ferroalloy plant dominating the landscape.
The train station is a great practical hub if you are navigating between Eastern and Western Georgia.
Stop at the roadside bakeries along the highway to buy the region's famous fresh clay-oven bread (Shoti).
Visit the nearby ruins of Shorapani fortress for a touch of ancient local history away from the industrial sites.

🍽 Food

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Shoti Bread

Zestafoni is famous for its roadside bakeries. Buy it hot and crispy straight from the tone (clay oven).

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Imeretian Wine

Try local white wine varieties like Tsolikouri at the small eateries surrounding the train station.

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Roadside Khachapuri

Grab a warm cheese pastry from the fast-food stalls near the highway, the well-suited traveler's snack.

🛍 Shopping · 🧘 Quiet spots

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Zestafoni Market

An authentic farmers' market excellent for picking up fresh Imeretian fruit and sour Tkemali plum sauce.

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Tone (Clay Ovens)

The area is known for producing traditional clay ovens; interesting to look at the roadside workshops.

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Banks of the Kvirila

Take a short walk along the riverbanks to escape the noise of this busy industrial and transit town.

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City Parks

Zestafoni features small, shaded parks where you can often spot locals relaxing or playing board games.

Zestafoni is an industrial town of about 20,000 inhabitants in the Imereti region of western Georgia, set along the Kvirila River in a narrow valley between the foothills of the Greater and Lesser Caucasus. Its importance stems from the manganese mines of nearby Chiatura: in 1933 the Zestafoni Ferroalloy Plant was built here, smelting manganese ore and coke into ferromanganese and silicomanganese, and remains one of the largest such facilities in the Caucasus. During the Soviet era it was a key pillar of the steel and arms industries; reconstruction after 1991 was based on the plant's privatisation to international investors. Beyond heavy industry, Zestafoni is known for its viticulture: the surrounding hills produce the famous native Tsolikouri grape, the basis for distinctive dry white wines. Notable sights include the Stalinist town centre, the municipal theatre and the nearby medieval Shorapani Fortress, mentioned by Strabo as a crucial Colchian frontier post, as well as the Sataplia Nature Reserve with its dinosaur footprints.