Kutaisi Historical and Ethnographic Museum

Kutaisi Historical and Ethnographical Museum was founded in 1912. At first, the collection was placed at Grigol Gvelesiani's home, who was a museum administrator.

In 1922, the Historical-ethnographical Museum was founded on the basis of the collection. In 1948 the museum was relocated in today's building (Tbilisi str. N1). The two-floor house, built in the 1860s, was the property of Prince Nicolas Eristavi. The building took its form after the reconstruction in the 1940s.

Museum

Nowadays more than 150,000 exhibits are kept in Kutaisi museum. The Archaeological Department which is filled with the materials discovered in Kutaisi and its suburbs has the preserved collection of Bronze Age and Antic age samples including Colchian axes, animal stylized bronze buckles, the bronze sculpture of a man(VII-VI century BC) and the bronze statue of a female from village Geguti etc.

Excellent samples of medieval forge art are kept in the museum's treasures: X cc Silver Stauroteca, XII-XIII cc Savior's icon from Motsameta and others. In the museum, there are a number of golden samples of XVI-XVIII cc.

The museum houses different archives including personal archives of public figures (Kirill Lortkipanidze, Giorgi Zdanovich, Alexander Garsevanishvili, Dimitri Nazarishvili, Davit Meskhi, Triphon Japaridze, and others), also Photos of XIX-XX cc.

The Ethnographic Department has rich collections of wood, metal, ceramics, leather, glass, and tissue – it is worth to mention XI century wooden door of the Lashe church, with Bible stories on it; XVII-XVIII cc ecclesiastical embroidery; rare collections of silver daggers and flint guns. At the museum library, with the 40 000 books, the XIX-XX cc of the periodical editions are protected.