How Borjomi became famous
Centuries ago today’s Borjomi was part of the historical Tori province, which now belongs to the Samtskhe-Javakheti region, together with Javakheti and Meskheti.
The importance of the Tori province mostly lay in its strategic value, guarding important intersections of roads leading to the western, eastern and southern provinces of Georgia. Still today you can see the remnants of three castles, called “Gogia”, “Petra” and “Sali”, overlooking the town of Borjomi from nearby hills.
When the Ottomans invaded the region during the 16th century, many churches, monasteries and castles were destroyed and left to decay. It was only after the Russian annexation of Georgia in the early 19th century that the Borjomi area slowly began to grow, when Russian soldiers discovered the existence of mineral waters in Borjomi and the information reached their leadership.
In 1825 Colonel Popov, commander of the Russian regiment, ordered the first mineral water springs to be surrounded with stones and so laid the foundations of today’s Borjomi Mineral Water Park.
But it was not until the 1840s that Borjomi and its mineral water springs became really famous under the Russian Viceroy of the Caucasus, General Yevgeny Golovin. The Caucasus Viceroyalty was the administrative and political authority of Imperial Russia in the Caucasus region that exercised its power through the office of a governor general.
General Golovin had a daughter named Ekaterina, who suffered from gastrointestinal illness. When she started to drink the Borjomi mineral water regularly, she soon recovered.
Her father then had parts of the forest cut down to access more mineral springs, he built baths and wooden houses around them and finally ordered control of the water to be transferred from military to civil authorities, laying the foundations for the upcoming economical success of the region. And General Golovin commemorated his daughter’s cure by naming one of the main mineral water sources “Ekaterina” and another “Yevgeny” after himself.
Soon new hotels and baths were built and not only was an administration for mineral waters established, but extensive bottling and export of the Borjomi mineral waters began. At the end of the 19th century Borjomi was already a wealthy resort town with a few thousand inhabitants. Its unofficial coronation came when Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich of Russia had a summer palais and a park built in Likani at the western end of Borjomi, known as the Romanov palace.
But that was still not the end of Borjomi’s glorious past as a resort for the rich and beautiful. Following the Russian invasion of Georgia in 1921, the Soviet regime turned all aristocratic estates into recreational mansions for the Communist party elite and Borjomi continued to grow throughout the Soviet era.
Despite the years of political and economic difficulties that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, from the early 2000s on growing government and private investment in tourism and municipal infrastructure helped Borjomi recover from a decade of decay.
Today Borjomi and its Historical Central Park are one of the main tourism attractions of the Samtshke-Javakheti region.
Picture credits: beyondarts GmbH
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.
