Kutaisi State Historical Museum

This is where the treasure of the western Georgian churches ended up. The museum was founded in 1921–22 and occupies the former Bank of Georgia building on Pushkin Street, five minutes from the central square. The collection runs to more than 200,000 items, shown across ten rooms on two floors.

The chronology reaches from the 9th century BC to the late medieval period: Colchian bronzes, classical pottery, Roman and Byzantine coins, manuscripts, textiles, leather and woodwork. That is the ordinary content of a good regional museum, well chosen, though labelling in foreign languages is patchy.

The reason to come is the Gold Treasury. When Bagrati and Gelati were closed under Soviet rule, their repoussé icons, processional crosses, book covers and liturgical vessels were brought here. The result is several centuries of Georgian goldsmithing gathered in one room: 10th to 12th-century icons in beaten silver and gold, fragments of cloisonné enamel, crosses with donor inscriptions. It completes a visit to Gelati — there you see the architecture and the mosaic, here you see what once stood inside.

The same building holds a research library of some forty thousand volumes and manuscripts. The institution is taken seriously in Georgia as a scholarly centre rather than as a tourist stop.

One honest note: much of the display is old-fashioned — glass cases, typed cards, weak lighting. A visitor after highlights only will spend thirty minutes in the treasury and leave; anyone interested in the history of the region can easily stay two hours.

Two smaller sections repay attention. The numismatic cabinet follows the currency of western Georgia from Greek issues through Byzantine and Sasanian pieces to medieval Georgian minting, which is a compact lesson in who was trading here and when. The ethnographic rooms hold Imeretian house interiors, wine vessels and farm tools of a kind that has disappeared from the villages within the last two generations.