Prometheus Cave Natural Monument – Tskaltubo, Georgia ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ช

After spending a couple of days in Batumi, we initiated a roadtrip throughout Georgia. One of the first places we visited while driving towards Tskaltubo, was Prometheus Caves. We really wanted to visit it since, as presented in several online sources, the deepest caves ever discovered all over the globe are located in Georgia.

Prometheus Cave is located in the Tskaltubo municipality. There are 22 halls found, where just 6 halls are open for tourists. It is possible to walk through the 1420 meters in the cave’s territory and enjoy brief boat tour by the end of it.

Prometheus Cave was discovered and studied by Georgian speleologists in the early 1980s. It is part of a large cave system united by one underground river. Nowadays, about 30 km of the river has been investigated, which is about half the length of the entire cave system. In 1985 the conversion of the cave into a sightseeing tourist destination began. By 1989, a pedestrian route was laid in the cave for about 1 kilometer, stairs and paths were built, and a 150-meter tunnel was punched out at the exit and the construction of ground-floor buildings began. The cave was equipped with temporary lighting, and small groups of tourists started to visit.

In 1990, due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and a lack of funds, the project was closed. For several years a local citizen protected the cave from vandals, as memorialized by a statue of him and his dog at the cave’s entrance.

In 2007, 17 years after the closure of the project, the Georgian authorities returned to the idea of the conversion of the cave into a tourist destination once again. President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili, who visited the cave in 2010, gave an impetus to cave transformation into a tourist object, and suggested new name โ€” Prometheus Cave, since the legendary antique protagonist Prometheus was chained to the mountains approximately in this area.

These are some photos and videos I took while visiting it:


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