Anaklia Resort

Anaklia, a village and seaside climatic resort in Zugdidi Municipality, lies on the south-eastern shore of the Black Sea on the left bank of the Enguri where it meets the sea, in the central part of the Colchian lowland on the border with the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, 3 metres above sea level and 30 kilometres from Zugdidi; the census of 2014 counted 1,331 inhabitants. The shore of Anaklia is 8 kilometres long, and for more than a kilometre runs the resort promenade lined with hotels, from whose western end a 540-metre pedestrian bridge over the Enguri leads to the village of Ganmukhuri on the far bank. North of the flat ground the western spurs of the Greater Caucasus rise 40–45 kilometres away and show in clear weather straight from the beach; between the mountains and the sea fertile soil and a mild climate yield tea, citrus, feijoa, hazelnuts, maize and soya.

In the village stand the ruins of the Ottoman fortress built in 1703, and on the spot from which Georgians were shipped as slaves to the Ottoman Empire a church of the Georgian Orthodox Church has been built; on 21 May 2012 a memorial to the victims of the Circassian genocide was unveiled, commemorating Russia's expulsion of the Circassians in the 1860s, which Georgia has recognised as genocide, the work of the Kabardino-Balkarian sculptor Khusen Kochesokov. By legend the name of Anaklia comes from the slave market: a mother named Ana had her child carried off by ship, and as she wailed on the shore people said "Ana rkians", in Mingrelian "Ana is crying", whence "Anarkia" and then "Anaklia"; scholarly versions link the name to the Abkhaz "akra", a lighthouse, or the Greek "akron", a cape. In 2014 the electronic music festival Kazantip was held here, and since 2015 the GEM Fest.

The earliest settlement on the territory of Anaklia dates from the Middle Bronze Age and belongs to the Colchian culture; this is the classical Heraclea of Colchis, the Anaclia of later authors and the Anarghia of the seventeenth-century travellers Arcangelo Lamberti and Jean Chardin. In the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries Anaklia was an important fortified port and fishing station of the principality of Odishi, trading with Trebizond and Constantinople. At the start of the eighteenth century the Ottoman Empire occupied Anaklia, building the fortress in 1703 and renewing it in 1725 by one account, or taking the town in 1723 by another, and it became a nest of the slave trade. In 1770, during the Russo-Turkish war, King Solomon I of Imereti regained Anaklia, though General Totleben's Russian detachment withdrew before a clash. In 1802 Kelesh-Bey Sharvashidze, prince of Abkhazia, forced Grigol Dadiani of Mingrelia to surrender Anaklia and took his son Levan hostage; in March 1805 Major General Rykhof took Anaklia and freed Levan, but after an Ottoman protest Tsitsianov withdrew the garrison, and in the war of 1806 the Russians restored Anaklia and Redut-Kale to Levan Dadiani. In the 1850s Anaklia was a small but strongly fortified port with a custom house, a considerable trade with Turkey and suburbs of Greeks, Jews and Armenians, with some 600 inhabitants.

The port later lost its importance, though in Soviet times a small base of the Black Sea Fleet remained here. After the war in Abkhazia of 1992–1993 a Russian peacekeeping post was set up at Anaklia in 1994; in 2006 the Georgian Ministry of Defence accused the Russian soldiers of damaging the Anaklia fortress and installing latrines and baths within its walls, and in July 2007 the post was withdrawn. In 2016 Georgia decided to build a deep-water port at Anaklia, a project of the Georgian-American Anaklia Development Consortium whose construction began in December 2017 and which was to take ships of 10,000 containers; in 2020 the government cancelled the contract citing missed deadlines, in May 2024 the China Communications Construction Company was named the private partner, in July 2024 the consortium lost its arbitration case, and in August the Belgian company Jan De Nul signed to build the marine infrastructure.

Anaklia is 30 kilometres from Zugdidi by road, about half an hour by car. The shore runs for about 8 kilometres, and for more than a kilometre of it the resort promenade is lined with hotels; the 540-metre pedestrian bridge to Ganmukhuri starts at its western end. The ruins of the fortress of 1703 and the Circassian memorial stand in the village.