Batumi

The bay has been used since antiquity: Greek writers record a Colchian harbour here, and the Romans built the fort of Apsaros at Gonio, a little to the south, to guard the coast. The settlement that became Batumi remained small through the medieval period, when Adjara belonged to the Georgian kingdoms, and from the sixteenth century it fell under Ottoman rule, which lasted for three centuries and left a lasting Muslim Georgian population in the province.

Russia annexed Batumi from the Ottomans in 1878, under the Treaty of San Stefano, and the town was transformed within a generation. The Batumi–Tiflis–Baku railway was completed in 1883 and a pipeline from Baku followed in 1907, making Batumi the Black Sea outlet for Caspian oil; the Rothschilds and Nobel interests built refineries and storage, and the port filled with tankers. The population grew quickly with Georgian, Armenian, Greek, Russian and Turkish arrivals, the stuccoed streets of the present old town were laid out, the seaside boulevard was planted in the 1880s, and a young Joseph Stalin lived here in 1901 organising strikes. British forces held the town from December 1918 until July 1920, when it passed to the Democratic Republic of Georgia.

In 1921 Adjara became an autonomous republic within Soviet Georgia, with Batumi as its capital, and the city lived on the port, tea, citrus and Soviet seaside holidays. After independence it was run for more than a decade by Aslan Abashidze, whose authoritarian local rule ended in 2004; the government that followed remade the seafront, inviting international architects and building the towers, plazas and hotels that now define the skyline, alongside casinos that draw visitors from across the region.

Batumi is Georgia's most obviously mixed city. Adjara's Muslim Georgians, a legacy of Ottoman rule, live alongside an Orthodox majority, and Armenian, Greek and Russian communities have left churches and buildings in the centre; Turkish is widely heard and Turkish traders and holidaymakers are a constant presence. The result is a city that feels less conservative and more Mediterranean in its habits than inland Georgia.

Summer sets the tone. Evening on the boulevard is a social institution: whole families walk from dusk until late, children ride bicycles, and street musicians play along the promenade. The Black Sea Jazz Festival, founded in 2007, brings international acts to the city each July. Casinos, nightclubs and a large summer bar scene give Batumi a reputation within Georgia as a place of easy pleasure.

Adjaran folk culture survives strongly in the hills behind the coast, with its own dances such as gandagana, the accordion-driven music of the mountain villages, and traditions of hospitality centred on the table. Visitors find the same rules as elsewhere in Georgia: toasts have an order and a purpose, guests are pressed to eat, and refusing food or wine outright is taken as coldness rather than restraint.

About 150,000 people live in Batumi, Georgia's second-largest city and the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, with its own regional government and parliament. The population swells greatly in July and August, when domestic and foreign visitors fill the seafront and short-let flats, and thins again in winter when much of the seasonal workforce leaves.

The economy rests on four things: the port and oil terminal, tourism, construction, and gambling, which is legal in Georgia and draws visitors from Turkey and beyond. Tea and citrus grown in the Adjaran lowlands, fishing and trade through the nearby Sarpi border crossing add to this. Construction has been the most visible force of the past two decades, filling the seafront with towers, much of it bought as investment property, and the pace of building has raised concerns about infrastructure and the loss of older houses.

Life divides sharply between the seafront and the inland districts where most residents actually live, in Soviet-era blocks and newer estates. Wages are modest and many jobs are seasonal. Rain is a constant of daily life, umbrellas are carried through much of the year, and the city's rhythm follows the tourist calendar — frantic in August, slow and quiet by December.

Adjara's contribution to Georgian cooking is famous well beyond the country: Adjaruli khachapuri, a boat of bread filled with melted cheese into which a raw egg yolk and a knob of butter are stirred at the table, then eaten by tearing off the crust and dipping. It is served everywhere in the city, sometimes in sizes intended to be shared. Other regional breads and cheeses come from the hills, including sulguni, the stretchy brined cheese used throughout western Georgia.

The wider western Georgian table is built on maize rather than wheat: mchadi, flat cornbread, and ghomi, a stiff cornmeal porridge, are served with cheese and stews, and elarji folds sulguni into the cornmeal until it pulls into threads. Sauces lean on walnuts, coriander, blue fenugreek and adjika, the hot red pepper paste. Being a port and a border city, Batumi also has Turkish grills, kebabs and baklava, and coffee is drunk in the Turkish style as often as not.

Fish is the local luxury. Black Sea species are landed daily and sold at the fish market, where a whole fish can be taken to a neighbouring kitchen to be grilled or fried; mussels and small fried fish appear on seafront menus in summer. Adjara grows tea and citrus, so mandarins fill the markets in autumn and Georgian tea is sold in the bazaars. Wine comes from Imereti and Kakheti rather than the coast, and chacha, the grape spirit, is made locally.