Vani Museum, Georgia

An hour south of Kutaisi, in a little-visited pocket of western Georgia, lies the absolutely fantastic Vani Archaeological Museum, home to a glittering array of treasures and artifacts from the ancient Kingdom of Colchis, from whence came the golden fleece. The beautifully-designed museum sits on a hilltop in the Imereti region, right beside the archaeological site where most of the artifacts were found.

Here you’ll see masterpieces of Colchian goldsmithing, exceptional items of bronze and silver, and a variety of pottery and numismatic objects from the Colchian period, which stretched from the Iron Age to the Hellenistic Era. The museum’s oldest objects date back to the 8th to 7th centuries BCE, while the famous grave of the Colchian woman, where golden objects of immense significance were found, dates to the 6th to 4th centuries BCE.

We visited last October and were shown around by one of the Archaeologists who had excavated many of the treasures we were now looking at. She described the glare of the gold as the tombs were opened for the first time in centuries, and the extraordinary thrill of the discoveries.

Very few people visit this part of Georgia, and our group had the whole museum to ourselves, noses pressed to the glass, oooh-ing and aaaah-ing at the astonishing finds.

If you’d like to visit the Vani museum on a tailor-made trip to Georgia, drop us a line.