Ozurgeti History Museum

Ozurgeti History Museum - Museum in the city of Ozurgeti, Guria region. It is the oldest museum among the seven museums of Guria.

History

In 1936, the leadership of the Makharadze district was asked to create a museum of local lore. Davit Dolidze, a resident of the village of Ekadia, raised the issue with the People's Commissariat of Education and asked Philip Makharadze to solicit the government to open a museum of local lore in Makharadze district.

On April 1, 1936, the Makharadze Museum of Local Lore was established on the basis of the Red Guards and Partisan Society. This society donated to the museum the weapons owned by it: flint rifles, pistols, daggers, swords, a total of 200 museum exhibits. The museum was housed in a small room on Zhdanov Street (in the city council building), then moved to the building on Guria Avenue, where an area of ​​402 square meters was allocated and the second floor of the building was completely dedicated to it. The first director of the museum was Nicholas Samsonia, who died in the Great Patriotic War. During the Great Patriotic War, the museum's scientific research was temporarily weakened and continued in the post-war years. The funds of the museum were filled with precious material cultural monuments. Exhibitions of fine arts and friendship were created.

In 1974, the museum moved to the palace of Dimitri Gurieli. In 1977, an exhibition representing the Soviet society was opened. An exhibition of a pre-revolutionary period of history was organized in 1978, the sections of the pre-revolutionary period and Soviet-era, archeology, ethnography, art, manuscripts and numismatics were created. In 1989, from the Salkhino Archaeological Base, early Iron and Late Bronze Age materials excavated at the Ureki-Tsvermagala Cemetery were donated to the museum. In April 1991, the museum was relocated again. It was housed in the former Museum of Military Glory of18th Army, built-in 1978-1981.

The Museum of Local Lore changed its name in 2001 to the Ozurgeti History Museum. In 2008 a branch of the History Museum was opened in the village of Gurianta, in 2009 was opened another branch, an ethnographic museum in the village of Dvabzu, and in 2010 another branch was opened in Likhauri - the Ekvtime Takaishvili Museum.

Exhibits

The museum preserves more than six thousand exhibits, the chronology of which covers the period from the IX millennium BC to the present, including the Neolithic period, Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age materials, rare examples of Colchian axes, hoes, segments, bronze plastic items, gold and silver items of early Antique Age, part of the Ureki treasure. The water pipes, column heads, incense burner, window glass, building bricks and tiles found in the town of Vashnari are kept here.

Among the numismatic collections preserved in the museum, it is worth to be mentioned the Colchian white coins of the VI-III centuries BC, gold coins of Alexander the Great, coins of George III, Queen Tamar, Rusudan, Lasha-George, Simon I, Erekle II, Turkish coins, examples of Soviet rubles, notaphily, 144 coins from Ozurgeti treasure, 10 Polish silver coins found in Tskhemliskhidi.

In addition, the museum presents ethnographic (nineteenth-century work and household items), documentary, heraldry, sigillography, and fine arts specimens, and old printed books. In total, the museum has more than 6,000 exhibits, including the french sword of Prince Murat, also the sword of the leader of the 1841 rebellion, Ambako Shalikashvili. "Kama" sword is 60 cm long, the blade is 5 cm wide, the hilt-10 cm, black, decorated with bone. The sword was purchased by the Museum in 1925. The museum also preserves a military bugle from the same rebellion.