The right to rest for workers was enshrined in the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union. Article 119 guaranteed “annual vacations with full pay for workers and employees and the provision of a wide network of sanatoriums”. Fourteen years earlier, the 1922 labour code had established that every worker was entitled to two weeks of annual leave and hundreds of sanatoriums were built across the vast territory that made up the Soviet socialist republics. These establishments, conceived as a combination of health resorts and medical centres, served as places for workers to rest and recuperate, thus helping to optimise their productivity.

Bath House No 8, located in Central Park where the hot springs spring forth, is the UFO-shaped Tskaltubo spa with a curved, circular roof and a central opening that lets in light.

In Georgia, Stalin’s native country, one of the Soviet Union’s leading spa towns was forged south of the Great Caucasus mountains. Tskaltubo’s radon mineral springs, with temperatures of 33-35C, could be used without prior heating and put the town in the spotlight. In 1920, the territory was nationalised and five years later the first facilities were built. In 1931, the Georgian Soviet socialist republic designated Tskaltubo as a premium spa complex and balneotherapy centre. In 1933, an ambitious plan for the spa resort was launched, arranging its infrastructure in a circle around the springs, and two further masterplans followed in the 50s and 80s. From the late 20s to the late 80s several hotels, nine bathhouses, 22 sanatoriums and a hydro-mineral research centre were built, many of them real gems of Soviet architecture.

A large dome with a small skylight and open arches stands at one end of the Imereti sanatorium, built in 1961, illuminating what was once an elegant concert hall.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors came to Tskaltubo during its golden years and it was declared a city in 1953. A railway line connected it directly to Moscow. Apart from the workers who came with their putevki, vouchers issued by a doctor for free treatment, the spa town also became one of the most popular holiday spots for the Soviet elite. The booming spa industry in Tskaltubo led to years of great prosperity and within five decades its population grew to 21,000, according to the last Soviet census in 1989. But the picture changed dramatically in December 1991 with the collapse and dissolution of the USSR and Tskaltubo stopped receiving visitors overnight. But a year later, in 1992, most of the abandoned buildings began to receive thousands of refugees fleeing the war in Abkhazia. The spa town became a temporary refuge for 10,000 internally displaced people who were housed in the former sanatoriums, a situation that lasted for 30 years.

Elguja Kovalini, 65, took refuge with his wife and children in the Tskaltubo sanatorium 31 years ago after fleeing the conflict in Abkhazia. Today they are one of 12 families still living there.

Silence and vegetation have overtaken the decrepit concrete, stone and marble structures. A few families resist amid the rubble and rubbish. “I’ve lived here for almost half my life,” says Elguja Kovalini, 65, who arrived at the age of 34 with his wife and two young children, fleeing the conflict in Abkhazia. The Kovalini family settled in the Tskaltubo, one of the oldest sanatoriums in the city. The main three-storey U-shaped building was built in 1931 and between 1967 and 1971 two more wings were added to accommodate more rooms for the then flourishing spa business. The rooms later housed up to 765 displaced families, mostly from Gagra, where they stayed for three decades waiting for the conflict to end so they could return home. It was not until 2021 that many displaced families were housed in new apartments. “Today there are only 12 families left in the sanatorium,” Kovalini says from one of the old sanatorium rooms converted into a house. “It has not been easy, we never imagined we would be here for so long, but today it is our home.”

A long paved path with small flights of steps leads to the main entrance of the Medea sanatorium, which in 2021 was declared a cultural heritage monument of Georgia.

Not far away, in another wing of the same sanatorium, Gia Bakradze, 60, checks on the homemade alcohol he is preparing. As his neighbours have moved away, he and his wife have taken up more space and occupy an entire corridor of the former sanatorium. Several huddled cats sleep in the corridor decorated with the Bakradzes’ plants. “Now everyone has left, we take care of the cats,” says Bakradze as he strokes one of them, “although I guess they don’t have much time left here either”.

A portrait recalls the passage of internally displaced people who converted Medea sanatorium’s once elegant rooms into homes where they took shelter after fleeing Abkhazia. Right: One of the rooms in Tskaltubo sanatorium with the last inhabitants’ belongings.

The Megobroba sanatorium housed 65 displaced Abkhazian families who in recent years have been offered new accommodation. No one has lived here since 2021. Right: A bathroom in the former Rkinigzeli sanatorium, which for decades was used by internally displaced people who fled the conflict in Abkhazia and took refuge here.

Efforts have been under way for more than a decade to restore Tskaltubo to its former splendour as a leading hydrotherapy resort, starting with the rehabilitation of the central park where the springs are located. Successive governments have come up with several redevelopment plans to revive the spa town along the lines of those devised in Soviet times to attract private investors. The Georgian state put the 22 sanatoriums up for sale, first in 2013 and then in 2018 and although several were acquired by foreign investment companies, nothing came to fruition as the state had not yet resolved the relocation of the displaced people who had settled in the former sanatoriums. In 2022, after most Abkhaz families had finally been offered a way out, the ministry of economy presented a new investment project called New Life of Tskaltubo, announcing the privatisation of the 14 sanatoriums that had not yet been sold, for 50m Georgian lari (£13.5m).

The magnificent staircases of the foyer to the Imereti sanatorium are falling apart.

In September 2023, a Qatari company acquired Tskaltubo, where the Bakradzes, Kovalinis and 10 other families still live, for 2.6m lari. The sale includes the obligation to invest more than 7.8m lari in the development within five years. “There have already been other cases where the buyer has not fulfilled its obligations and the state has taken back the property,” says Bakradze, referring to the Meshakhte sanatorium, an impressive building from 1952 that was completely abandoned and privatised in 2015 for 2.5m lari on the condition its new owner from the United Arab Emirates would develop a five-star hotel by 2018. Meshakhte was returned to the state in 2023 due to the investor’s breach of contract.

The south facade of the Metalurg sanatorium had access to an elegant gallery overlooking a courtyard which has now disappeared amid the wild vegetation.

Although rehabilitation work on some of the privatised sanatoriums has already begun – on the Tbilisi sanatorium, for example, a prominent building from 1951 guarded by two tetramorphic griffins – more than half of the sanatoriums have yet to be sold, despite the fact they have been continually put up for sale since August 2022.

Siblings Saba and Nia, aged six and three, play in the corridors of Rkinigzeli sanatorium, which they call home.

Children’s laughter escapes from one of the crumbling sanatoriums. Saba, six, kicks a ball through the deserted corridors of the Rkinigzeli sanatorium, while his little sister, Nia, three, chases him. Today they are the only children living in this ghostly setting which they call home. “When I was little, there were a lot of children,” says their mother, Irina Bondarevi, 39, who also grew up here. She was nine when she and her family fled Abkhazia. “Of the 500 families that came to live here, only three of us remain,” says Bondarevi, who has not yet received a house to where she can move permanently with her parents, husband and children.

The Rkinigzeli sanatorium at its peak housed 350 patients and later provided shelter to more than 500 families displaced by the Abkhaz conflict.

Irina Bondarevi, 39, with her children Saba, six, and Nia, three, in one of the rooms at Rkinigzeli sanatorium which has been converted into a kitchen. Bondarevi arrived here aged nine, after fleeing the conflict in Abkhazia with her parents.

The children, oblivious to their surroundings, play outside the dilapidated five-storey building constructed in 1954. The sanatorium received up to 350 patients during its most prosperous period and housed medical and diagnostic laboratories specialising in cardiovascular diseases. Across the road, a hidden path leads through a wooded area to another abandoned sanatorium, the Metalurg. The imposing four-storey building from 1957, with its huge, arched glass window decorated with carved stone, was declared a cultural heritage monument of Georgia in 2021.

Tania Jan, 60, arrived at the Metalurg sanatorium in 1992 with her three children, fleeing the conflict in Abkhazia, where her husband died.

“We are only 13 families left living here now,” says Tania Jan, 60, who moved into the Metalurg sanatorium in 1992 with her three children after her husband died fighting in the Abkhaz conflict. “We had grown to 700 families,” adds her neighbour Mindadze Gurau, 60, who has also lived with his wife in this building for more than 30 years. “For decades we have all maintained this place as best we could, but we don’t have much time left and it is falling apart.” The Metalurg is one of the best-preserved sanatoriums, although it, too, was ransacked like all the others. With no means to survive, the displaced Abkhazians removed many of the items that could be reused or sold, such as furniture, lamps, radiators, bathtubs or tiles that had not been looted before their arrival, and even used the elegant old wooden floors as firewood for cooking and heating.

Little remains today of the majestic concert hall of the Metalurg sanatorium, once used by patients suffering from arthritic diseases.

During Tskaltubo’s heyday, Metalurg sanatorium guests ate their meals in a dining room resembling a greenhouse surrounded by large windows.

Very few refugees, like Tania, remain in Tskaltubo’s abandoned sanatoriums. “So far we have not been offered any better option,” she says from the lobby of the Metalurg, which still has its original chandelier and wooden and wrought-iron railings. “We can’t afford to pay for another house, so soon I don’t know what will become of us once again …” Most displaced people, however, have been rehoused and work has begun on rebuilding some of the decaying buildings of this unique spa town.

Source: The Guardian.