# Mikheil Khergiani House Museum
- URL: https://explore-georgia.ge/en/places/khergiani-museum
- Type: place to visit
- Region: Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti
- Coordinates: 43.046944, 42.731389

The Mikheil Khergiani House Museum is in the old part of Mestia, the Lagami quarter, in the ancestral house of the Khergiani family (32 M. Khergiani Street), where the future mountaineer was born. The house is a dwelling complex typical of these parts, a traditional Svan house, the machubi, with the family tower built against it; the tower was unheated, served in peacetime to store food and was entered straight from the house, and is dated to the eleventh century. The display begins in the main room of the Svan house with the ethnographic belongings of the Khergiani family: the cradle hanging by the hearth, a carved chair, the dining table and benches, a lamp and simple crockery. Mikheil's room keeps its furnishings of his lifetime: a cupboard, the bed over which hangs the friendly caricature of Mikheil as a tiger by the Moscow artist Alexei Gaponenko, a table and, on the wall, a sketch map of the Himalayan ranges.

A separate hall is devoted to the history of Soviet mountaineering, with old primus stoves, ice axes, rock hammers with wooden shafts and compasses, and here are Khergiani's training kit and awards, a stand on the rescue team he led, accounts of his climbs abroad and of the accident that killed him, and photographs of the places named after him. Inside the tower, high on a sheer wall like a rock face, hangs the fateful red rope with which the life of the Svan legend was cut short, together with the harness he wore on his last day. The house museum keeps a visitors' book, and on the roof of the tower is a viewing platform over Mestia and its mountains.

## History

Mikheil Khergiani, born Chumlian Khergiani and renamed Mikhail by his Russian instructors in 1951, was born in Mestia on 20 March 1932; his father Vissarion was one of the first well-known Svan climbers and scaled Ushba in 1937. In 1952 at Yalta he shared the USSR rock-climbing title with Shaliko Margiani, and he won it seven times in all; in 1960, invited to England by John Hunt, leader of the 1953 Everest expedition, he was nicknamed the "Tiger of the Rocks". In 1963 he became an Honoured Master of Sport of the USSR, in 1964 he climbed Ushba, and in 1967 he was named International Master of Sport and Honoured Coach of Georgia. On 4 July 1969 in the Italian Alps, on the Su Alto route of Monte Civetta, a rockfall cut his rope and he fell about 600 metres; he was buried in Mestia, Svan songs pictured Dali, the goddess of the hunt, mourning him, Vladimir Vysotsky and Yuri Vizbor dedicated songs to him, and in 1971 the Khergiani Prize was founded in the USSR.

The museum was founded by the climber's relatives and friends; one of its organisers and for many years its director was the Yalta mountaineer Yuri Burlakov (1930–2016), author of the biography "The Ascender" and an honorary citizen of Mestia. In 1979, on the "Mishaoba" festival, a small single-room museum opened in the relatives' house, a separate house was built for the family, and admirers from all over the Soviet Union sent letters and objects, some of which went into the permanent display and some into the "Gifts to the Museum" section; in 1985 the permanent display was completed and the house museum opened to visitors. By some accounts the museum was founded in 1983.

## Visit info

The museum is in the Lagami quarter, under a kilometre from the centre of Mestia, at 32 Mikheil Khergiani Street; Mestia is served by Queen Tamar Airport and lies about 145 kilometres by road from Zugdidi. The tour is given by the family, by some accounts by the climber's namesake relative Mikheil, himself a mountaineer; check opening days and the entry fee locally. A viewing platform is laid out on the roof of the tower.

## Tips

The story ends in the tower: the red rope and harness hang high on the sheer wall, so look up. It fits into half a day with the Svaneti Museum and the towers of Mestia; read Burlakov's "The Ascender" beforehand and the tour reads differently.

## Safety

Take the climb up the tower slowly and hold children by the hand; leave bags below. In winter the yard can be icy.

## Sources

- [Mikheil Khergiani House Museum — Georgian Wikipedia](https://ka.wikipedia.org/wiki/მიხეილ_ხერგიანის_სახლ-მუზეუმი)
- [Mikheil Khergiani House Museum — Russian Wikipedia](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дом-музей_Михаила_Хергиани)
- [Mikhail Khergiani — English Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khergiani)
- [Mikheil Khergiani House Museum — Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q55074566)

## This page in other languages

- [ქართული](https://explore-georgia.ge/ka/adgilebi/mikheil-khergianis-sakhl-muzeumi)
- [Русский](https://explore-georgia.ge/ru/mesta/dom-muzei-mikhaila-khergiani)