Photo by YeraC, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
🇬🇪 Georgia · Imereti Region
Photo by YeraC, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
🇬🇪 Georgia · Imereti Region
♨ Temperature
34°C
⛰ Altitude
96 m
⚗ pH
7.2
💧 TDS
720 mg/L
🌊 Flow rate
120 L/s
📅 Established
Antiquity; Soviet resort built 1930s–1950s
✓ Verified on 2026-07-22
Tskaltubo is a small city in the Imereti region of western Georgia, built almost entirely around its thermal radon springs. The springs emerge at 33–35°C — unusually comfortable, requiring no cooling before bathing — and carry a low natural concentration of radon gas, which has long been the basis of the town's balneological claim. At the height of the Soviet era, Tskaltubo operated eighteen spa houses and treated over 120,000 patients a year, accommodating workers from across the USSR sent for state-funded rest cures. Stalin himself reportedly bathed here. Today, roughly half of the magnificent domed and colonnade-fronted bath palaces — built in Stalinist neoclassical style in the 1930s to 1950s — stand abandoned, their interiors frozen in a beautiful decay, while the other half have been restored and attract visitors from Europe drawn as much by the architectural atmosphere as by the waters. The springs flow at the same temperature and rate they always have: undisturbed by the political history that rose and fell around them.
| Radon | 0.8 mg/L |
| Sodium | 95 mg/L |
| Bicarbonate | 580 mg/L |
| Calcium | 65 mg/L |
| Magnesium | 28 mg/L |
Tskaltubo's springs were known in antiquity and are referenced in Georgian chronicles. The Soviet-era transformation of the town into a therapeutic resort complex produced some of the most architecturally ambitious spa buildings in the Caucasus — Stalinist neoclassical bath palaces with colonnaded facades, vaulted bathing halls, and mineral water drinking galleries. The partially ruined bath houses are now subject to heritage preservation discussions involving the Georgian government and European cultural organisations.
Tskaltubo occupies an unusual place in post-Soviet cultural memory: a monument to a system of collective welfare — universal access to medical bathing — that no longer exists. The abandoned bath palaces, colonised by moss and local squatters after 1991, have become a pilgrimage site for photographers and urban explorers. The contrast between the grandeur of the architecture and the modest simplicity of the springs themselves captures something essential about the idealism and the contradictions of the Soviet project.
The radon springs of Tskaltubo flow naturally from a limestone aquifer at consistent temperature and chemistry. The springs have never required pumping. The current challenge is not geological but architectural: the restoration of derelict Soviet bath houses using materials that respect both the historic character and seismic safety requirements of the region.