TSKALTUBO RESORT

Touristic Short Film about
TSKALTUBO Resort
Presented by The Municipality
of The City of Tskaltubo , West Georgia

Tskaltubo is a beautiful Spa Town central part of West Georgia .

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the decadent Georgia spa town of Tskaltubo fell off the map. Once an elegant Soviet destination that attracted the elites of the Communist Party, including Joseph Stalin himself, for its natural springs, Tskaltubo is now an array of crumbling hotels, bath houses, and sanitoriums—ornamental health resorts designed for both rest and medical treatments. But 30 years after the resort town’s closure, photographs of these abandoned buildings are attracting new travelers.

During the past three decades of abandonment, most of Tskaltubo's buildings have been damaged because they became shelters for people after the war. Nobody was trying to save Tskaltubo until the Georgian government recently began to see its potential for tourism, and began developing a plan to invest in the town as travelers seek it out.

The town was the favored destination of Georgian-born Stalin and the communist elite. Being favored by Stalin, Georgia was positioned as a leisure destination in the Soviet Union; but Tskaltubo was known for its legendary healing waters long before that. The spring water in Tskaltubo is said to have a high level of radon, which has long been believed to decrease inflammation.
Legends of people healing their ailments in the area's springs have lingered for centuries.

Tskaltubo’s so-called ‘Waters of Immortality’ were likely ‘discovered’ in the 13th century (according to some sources, a shepherd happened upon them). The first bathhouses were built as early as the 1870s. In Soviet times, especially in the years after WWII, Tskaltubo became the most popular and developed of Georgia’s spa towns.

In the 1920s, the territory of Tskaltubo was acquired by the state and in 1931, it was declared a balneotherapy centre – a place for the treatment of medical conditions using mineral water.
Today Georgian government and a local municipality are taking serious measures to develop a resort as spa capital of Eastern Europe.

Submitted by
International Cultural Center-
Black Sea Global Art League,
GFA - Georgian Film Abroad
Producer
Natalie Mikava Stuart-Fox