Introduction
Imereti is Georgia's centre-west and the part of the country a great many visitors arrive in without realising it — home to Kutaisi, the international airport most European budget flights use, and to the canyons, caves and monasteries that make the surrounding region worth stopping in rather than driving through.
Overview
Imereti has an unusual problem for a region with this much in it: most of its visitors are people passing through on their way somewhere else. Kutaisi's airport is the entry point for a large share of budget flights into Georgia, and the standard behaviour on landing is to get straight into a transfer for the capital several hours east, which means the region is seen mainly through a car window by people who never learn what they drove past. What they drove past is a genuine centre-west with its own character, greener and softer than the east, built around a working city that was Georgia's capital in an earlier era and served briefly as the seat of parliament in the modern one. Above the city sit two of the most significant religious buildings in the country, one of them holding a mosaic that is among the finest surviving anywhere in the region. North and west of it the landscape breaks into limestone: a series of gorges with walkways bolted to their walls, and cave systems with underground rivers you can travel through by boat. It is the most family-friendly and least demanding part of Georgia to travel, requires no mountain vehicle and no seasonal gamble, and sits directly on the road between the capital and the Black Sea coast. The practical argument is simple: Imereti earns two days on its own merits, and anyone who has already landed here is better placed to give them than a visitor driving out from the capital and back.
Discover Imereti
Kutaisi is Georgia's third city and one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the country, an unhurried river town of leafy streets and a large covered market that is a genuine working one rather than a tourist attraction. It is not a polished destination and does not pretend to be, which is much of its appeal: prices are lower than the capital's, the pace is slower, and the food scene reflects Imeretian cooking rather than a national menu. The Bagrati Cathedral stands on the hill above the centre, an eleventh-century building reconstructed in the modern era — a reconstruction thorough enough that it was removed from the World Heritage list, so what you are looking at is substantially new work on an ancient footprint, which is worth knowing before you climb up. The city is also the practical base for everything else in the region, and arriving at its airport and routing west-to-east makes far better sense than the long transfer east that most people book on landing.
Ways to Experience This Destination
Kutaisi as a first stop rather than an airport — a working river city with a covered market, lower prices and Imeretian cooking.
Gelati's mosaic and monastic academy, the cliff-edge church at Motsameta, and Bagrati's reconstructed cathedral above the city.
Okatse's cliff walkway, boat trips through Martvili's gorge, and the lit chambers and underground river of Prometheus Cave.
Frequently asked questions
Visaja keeps this page's contact details and visa guidance under continuous review — still, requirements can change at short notice, so confirm the essentials with the mission or the official government portal before you travel.