Granny Maro's School-Museum

In the historical village of Muskhi, a 20-minute drive southeast from the city of Akhaltsikhe, lies one of the finest museums of traditional Georgian art and handicraft: the museum of Granny Maro, known as Maro Bebo’s school-museum, established in March 2013.

Maro Bebo is an icon in the field of traditional Georgian handicraft and was acknowledged as a "Georgian National Living Treasure" in 2014.

In her small, but beautiful museum, Maro Bebo keeps around 200 items of traditional Georgian craftsmanship, like hand-made carpets and rugs, bags, shoes and household items collected over several decades, illustrating the traditional “Meskhetian” way of life.  

Locals use the word “Meskheti” as a name for the Samthske region. The original inhabitants of the Meskheti region, who settled here thousands of years ago, are called “Meskethians”. 

Among the exhibits preserved in the museum are hand-woven carpets and rugs. Most of them were created by Maro Bebo and her disciples from the 1970s to the present.

But Granny Maro’s museum in Muskhi is not only the place of a fascinating exhibition, it is also a school of traditional Georgian handicraft. To keep the traditional arts of wool spinning and carpet weaving alive, Granny Maro still teaches at the Muskhi School-Museum and offers a fascinating insight into the long tradition of Georgian carpet weaving. 

Maro Bebo still uses old Meskhetian techniques and therefore weaves the thread for the rugs with natural dyes. She also uses natural ingredients like walnut leaves or blackberries to obtain the colors of traditional Meskhetian carpets, which are not only unique in color, but also in style, with characteristic patterns.

In addition to carpets and rugs, Granny Maro’s Museum has more than two hundred different types of traditional household items on display that have been collected by Maro Bebo over the past decades from neighboring villages: clay pottery, copper jugs, wooden household items, traditional leather shoes and much more, with some items dating back to a couple of hundred years ago. 

How to get there:
Granny Maro's Museum is located In the historical village of Muskhi, 16 km (a 20-minute-drive) southeast of the city of Akhaltsikhe. By taxi 20 min (10 GEL), by minibus 30min (2 GEL).

Distances from major cities:
Akhaltsikhe - Muskhi: 16km

Opening hours:
Open everyday including weekends.

Admission fee:
There is no entrance fee.

Important things to know:
If you want to visit the museum, we suggest you take a taxi with a local driver, who knows how the place. Otherwise it is almost impossible to find. 

Picture credits: picture taken by beyondarts GmbH with kind permission of Maro Bebo's School Museum

Project “Increased regional added value in the tourism sectors of Georgia by Digital Heritage Tourism Guides” was funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) with funds of Austrian Development Cooperation.