10 Things to Do in Anaklia, Georgia

When it comes to kooky resorts on the Black Sea, Anaklia sure gives Batumi a run for its money.

Located at the northern end of Georgia’s coastline – and extending to within 300 metres of the Abkhazia separation line – Anaklia and the neighbouring resort-village of Ganmukhuri is one of the most bizarre places I have been in Georgia.

Ambitious plans to make Anaklia the next Batumi (the beaches up here are a lot cleaner, so who knows what could have been…) have come in fits and starts, evidence of which – abandoned hotels, half-finished villa houses, unused infrastructure – is strewn all along the waterfront. (You will notice that I use the phrase ‘supposed to be’ quite a lot in this guide.)

Now it looks like Anaklia might finally receive its long-awaited deep-sea port, the country’s very first. As I write this, a draft of the 2025 state budget has 150 million GEL earmarked for the project.

I don’t know what will become of Anaklia, but I do think that change is imminent. I sure didn’t want to miss out on photographing its futuristic architecture or crossing its pedestrian bridge, the longest of its kind in Europe. If you share my interest in urbexing and visiting offbeat places, I highly recommend prioritising a trip to Anaklia before the port works recommence.

This quick guide covers the best things to do in Anaklia in an afternoon, how to get there, and other travel tips.

Briefly about Anaklia

Anaklia is located in Western Georgia’s Samegrelo Region and has a distant past linked to the Kingdom of ​​Colchis. Traded between the Ottomans and the Russian Empire, by the mid-19th century, Anaklia was a fortified port town with a cosmopolitan make-up of Georgian, Abkhaz, Circassian, Greek, Armenian and Jewish families.

In the Soviet period, Anaklia piqued the party elite’s attention as a potential location for a significant trading post. A massive underwater rift off the coast would make it the ideal location for Georgia’s first and only deep-sea port.

Plans hatched in the 1980s were never realised, and former president Mikhail Saakashvili’s attempts to revive them several decades later via Lazika – a ‘modern port and resort city’ – were promptly scrapped.

Lazika (the name references the Laz people) was destined to be the second-biggest city in Georgia, with a population cresting half-a-million people by 2024. Instead, Anaklia’s current community – which numbers less than 1,000 people – find themselves living in a state of limbo.

I can imagine that every unfinished building, every square foot of abandoned investment must feel like a constant reminder of the many broken promises.

Now backed by a Chinese consortium, the construction of Europe’s last port on a patch of scorched earth adjacent to Anaklia Beach is apparently back on the cards for 2025.

If and when things change, I will return to Anaklia – and to this guide – to share the latest updates.

How to get to Anaklia

The best way to reach Anaklia is via the city of Zugdidi, which is 32 kilometres or around 45 minutes to the east via the Zugdidi-Anaklia Road.

Minibus #24 departs from outside the Zugdidi Bazaar at 7am, 8.30am, 10.30am, 11.30am, midday, 1pm, 1.30pm, 2.30pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5.30pm and 6pm daily. In summer, there is an extra bus at 7pm.

To get back to Zugdidi, the bus departs Anaklia at 7am, 7.40am, 8am, 8.30am, 10am, 10.50am, 11am, 1pm, 1.20pm, 3pm, 4pm, 6pm and 7pm, with an extra 8pm bus in summer.

Double-check times and fares locally before you travel.

If you are driving to Anaklia, note that you must use the same inland road to access the beach. Anaklia is separated from Poti and Batumi by an undeveloped stretch of coast with no road connection. If you are coming from the southern end of the coast, you will have to go the long way around, back inland. The drive from Poti to Anaklia takes around 1.5 hours.

The Pier Sculpture was a late addition to our itinerary, but ended up being the highlight of our recent trip to Anaklia.

It is located 5 kilometres further down the coast in Tikori, and is only accessible via an inland access road that goes through Kirovi and Ergeta. (The coastal road that Google Maps will try to route you on goes straight through the port development site and simply ends at a certain point.) The final few kilometres of the road (from this point onwards) is unpaved, but a sedan can manage the compacted gravel track, even after rain.

Since you have to turn off the road from Zugdidi early to reach Tikori, I recommend going here first. If you don’t have a car, it might be possible to reach the sculpture on foot from Anaklia by walking along the beach – but I am not sure how long it would take, or if it will be an option when work on the port commences.

The Pier Sculpture is a 33-metre-high steel installation created by J.MAYER.H. The firm’s founder, German architect Jürgen Hermann Mayer, is responsible for a gamut of other quirky landmarks in Georgia, including the Border Checkpoint building in Sarpi, the airport, House of Justice and police station in Mestia, the new rest stops along the highway in Gori and Pipia, and the new Akhalkalaki Railway Station on the BTAK line.

This particular work was completed in 2013 as part of the Lazika project. It sits on a pier-like platform that extends over the Black Sea, the curvy shape of which mirrors the contours of the sculpture itself. Its bulbous form is composed of interlaced steel plates. The design reminds me of the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, or The Cloud art installation in Tirana, Albania.

Completely exposed to the elements and apparently no longer maintained, the Pier Sculpture is coated in a patina of rust and algae. The platform railings are falling away in places, too.

Because of the sculpture’s open form, you can enter inside by ducking down then climbing over the plates. Just be extremely careful if you do, because there are massive holes in the bottom of the concrete platform that would send you directly down into the sea if you slipped. Inside the sculpture there is a ladder that goes all the way to the top. We didn’t dare!

There are several buildings on the shore near the pier. According to recent reviews, the nearby kids’ summer camp is abandoned – but it was most definitely in use at the time of our visit, with dozens of coach buses around and a big group of young people gathered inside.

A little further back, the City of Lazik Administration Building is straight out of Jurassic Park. The ultra-modern steel and glass structure is completely abandoned and overgrown.

An adjacent culdesac and road that I guess was supposed to connect Tikori to Anaklia – but currently leads to nowhere – are both lined with mature palm trees. Just imagine the cost of the trees alone… All left to rot. The mind boggles.

In the surrounding area, thousands upon thousands of concrete dolosse – placed here to prevent erosion – are scattered across the sand and in the surrounding grassy areas.

Moving on to Anaklia proper: The town centres on a beautifully designed boulevard that runs for the entire length of Anaklia Beach. With more palms, marked walking paths and sculptural bench seats, it looks much like the promenades in Batumi and Kobuleti – but with one key difference: It is virtually empty.

Aside from a scattering of shops and the odd popcorn vendor, there isn’t much happening on Anaklia Boulevard at all. We walked up and down several times during the afternoon and again at sunset, and there were never more than a dozen other people around. Boxing game machines blare out their crude tunes to an audience of no one.

There are several abandoned and unfinished buildings in Anaklia that urbexers will enjoy exploring. The most dystopian is the Golden Fleece Hotel, a massive nine-storey, pyramid-shaped resort set right on the beach.

According to its Facebook Page, the hotel traded through the pandemic and had guests as recently as summer 2021. It is now completely abandoned, with broken windows and ferns sprouting from places they shouldn’t be. The gate is locked and there are cameras around, so I definitely don’t recommend trying to go inside.

I mistook the helix-shaped concrete shell of the building next door for an unfinished hotel. Apparently it was supposed to be a training centre of some sort, but it was never finished.

At the end of the boulevard, there is an unfinished villa house enclosed by a high wall with parapets. There was a police car out front, so we didn’t get a chance to photograph it properly.

Not every hotel in Anaklia is abandoned, of course. Also on the beachfront, Hotel Anaklia was positively bustling at the time of our visit, and there are at least 40 other accommodations in Anaklia that are currently accepting guests.

Stretching 504 metres across the mouth of the Patara Enguri River, the Anaklia-Ganmukhuri Pedestrian Bridge is considered to be the longest cable-stayed timber bridge in Europe.

This is something of an accident: The bridge was originally supposed to be made completely of steel. The chestnut boardwalk was only introduced due to budgetary constraints.

Exposed to the salt, sun and wind, the bridge has suffered since it was erected in 2012. Large sections of the boardwalk have splintered or fallen away, and in some places, pieces of weather-proof gypsum board have been laid down for safety.

The wide open Black Sea appears to the west, while to the east, there is a little pocket of wetland and a forested riverine island. The sound of birds – and the sight of flocks spiralling overhead – is quite beautiful and a reminder that Anaklia is located within one of the world’s most important migratory bird corridors (more on that in #10 below).

The Anaklia Tower appears on the Ganmukhuri side of the bridge. I recommend walking along the beachfront first, then coming back to the tower for sunset (see #8 below).

There is not much happening on the Ganmukhuri side of the bridge. Officially, Ganmukhuri is a village, but we saw very few houses. There are a couple more resorts (both operating and in-progress), a football stadium, and a restaurant.

As you alight the bridge, you will notice a small ship washed up on the beach. It sits directly in front of a new hotel development, with the abandoned Anaklia Tower in the distance. This weird scene perfectly captures the spirit of the place.

I have no idea where the Morskoy Konik came from, or how it ended up beached like a rusty whale in Anaklia. On one side, the name ‘Morskoy Konik’ is printed in Latin characters. On the port side, in Georgian lettering, there is the word ‘Aitseri’. But maybe it is just graffiti – I don’t know.

From old photos, it looks like the ship used to be upright and the cabin and deck accessible via metal stairs, but it has since keeled over and lies on a precarious angle.

A little further along the beach, the Ganmukhuri Amphitheater is another example of public infrastructure that has been disused and seemingly forgotten.

Topped by two white tents, the outdoor amphitheatre has a capacity of 2,000 people. The design is really cool – the stage is elevated on concrete platforms that are cantilevered over the sea, so that the waves lap at the stage and the rising tide passes under the bleachers.

Once you pass the amphitheatre and the site where the electronic music festival GEM Fest was last held in 2018, Ganmukhuri Beach extends all the way north towards the Zargashi River and the formidable double-dotted line on Google Maps, which denotes the separation line between Georgia and Abkhazia.

Previous to this, the closest I had been to Abkhazia was standing on the walls of Rukhi Castle near Zugdidi. If you want to, you can get to within a few hundred metres of the line – possibly closer – by walking along the beachfront.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see here – a giant fence that reaches out into the sea? There is nothing of the sort, of course.

We arrived at the end of the beach with only an hour or so of daylight left. The whole scene was very spooky – but in a different way from the rest of Anaklia. The path north is obstructed by construction work, but you are apparently free to stroll along the sand.

I went as far as I thought sensible, past the last swimmers until there was only a lone fisherman ahead of me.

Back towards the amphitheatre, there are lifeguard patrol huts all along the beach. This area was a bit livelier than Anaklia with people swimming and sun loungers and umbrellas set out on the rocks.

You would never know that less than 100 kilometres away in Ochamchire, a Russian naval base is being built.

Devised under the Lazika project, the Anaklia Tower was supposed to be a tourism centre with an observation deck and a restaurant. But it was never completed. In 2020, a new elevator was installed inside the spaceship-like building – but from what we could see, that’s as far as the restoration works went.

The shape of the tower does resemble the Pier Sculpture, but there is nothing on the J.MAYER.H website about this structure so I guess it was created by a different team. I can’t find any information about it at all – if you know something about the tower, please drop me a comment below.

The inland part of Anaklia behind the beach is very sparse. All of the town’s civic architecture appears to exist along the main Zugdidi-Anaklia Road. Several old Soviet-era buildings have been spruced up with ombre paint and murals.

Opposite the building pictured above, the Circassian Genocide Monument is the only memorial of its kind in Georgia. It was erected in 2012 to honour the Circassian families from this region who were expelled or killed in the 1860s in the aftermath of the Russo-Circassian War, the longest conflict the Caucasus has seen.

The Circassian genocide or Tsitsekun resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1-1.5 million people, making it the 19th century’s single most lethal episode of ethnic cleansing. In 2011, Georgia became the first – and remains the only – nation to recognise this act as a genocide.

The monument in Anaklia consists of a circular white stone pillar with a tableau of scenes from the expulsion. The statue atop depicts a mother cradling her daughter alongside a young boy dressed in Circassian costume. Its author, Khusen Kochesokov, hails from the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic.

Part of Georgia’s UNESCO World Heritage-listed Colchic Forests and Wetlands, Kolkheti National Park covers a massive 29,000 hectares. More than one million birds of prey pass transit through this area – known as the Eastern Black Sea Migration Corridor – every year. Some of them nest in the marshes of Kolkheti.

Poti is traditionally the departure point for boat tours across the wetlands – I did a speedboat tour from Poti a couple of years ago. But you can also access the park from the north via Anaklia.

Voyages into the ‘Georgian Amazon’ via the Churia River start from a berth south of Anaklia Beach in Tikori. The meeting point for tours is right by the Pier Sculpture, accessed via the same road I mentioned at the top of the post. See the location here.

As in Poti, boats are operated by private drivers. I was quoted 150 GEL for a private tour, which is in-line with pricing down the coast. Contact Dato on +995 593 22 73 28 (English spoken) to arrange a time. Boats only run when conditions are suitable (not in strong winds or storms).

Unfortunately that afternoon storm that gifted us such beautifully moody skies also prevented us from getting out on the water. We will be back for the tour another time!

For other enquiries, the Churia Anaklia Kolkheti National Park office can be reached on +995 577 10 18 37.