New Athos Cave

The New Athos Cave opens on the northern slope of the Iverian Mountain (344 m), 220 metres above sea level, within the town of New Athos in Gudauta Municipality; it is 1.5–2 kilometres from the town centre and 24 from Sokhumi. The cave formed in thick-bedded Lower Cretaceous limestone and consists of a vertical section (183 m deep in all) and a horizontal one (3,285 m long in all). Its volume is put at about a million cubic metres, and by other measurements at more than 1.5 million; by that measure it is counted among the largest caves in the world.

The system comprises eleven chambers (nine by another count), six of them open to visitors. The original names, "Abkhazia", "Georgian Speleologists", "Clay", "Iveria", "Temple", "Sokhumi", "Tbilisi" and "Helictite Salon", were changed twice, before the opening in 1975 and after the war of 1992–1993; today the tourist route begins in the "Anakopia" chamber and ends in "Apsny". The largest chamber is 260 metres long and up to 75 wide, with a ceiling up to 50 metres high; the tallest reaches 97 metres. The entrance chamber holds two lakes, "Anatolia" (1,000 m², 26 m deep, water at 10 °C) and the "Blue Lake" (1,250 m²).

The chambers are decorated with white and amber stalactites, stalagmites, helictites, petrified waterfalls and calcite "flowers"; in places there are clay deposits 10–30 metres thick and heaps of fallen limestone. The air temperature stays at 12.6–14.4 °C all year, with relative humidity of 94–100 %. Crustaceans, arachnids, myriapods, insects and bats have been studied here.

The cave has four entrances, only one of them natural, the abyss in the ceiling of the "Anakopia" chamber; the others are tunnels, through which the underground railway opened on 4 July 1975 runs between three stations.

The abyss on the slope of the Iverian Mountain, which local people called the "Bottomless Pit", had long been known but never explored. In 1961 Givi Smyr, a native of New Athos, showed the entrance to speleologists, and on 14 July of that year the assault team of an expedition of the Vakhushti Bagrationi Institute of Geography of the Georgian Academy of Sciences, Zurab Tintilozov, Givi Smyr, Arsen Okrojanashvili and Boris Gergedava, passed the cascade of shafts and entered the first giant chamber at a depth of 135 metres. The expedition was led by Shalva Kipiani.

In the years that followed the institute's expeditions studied the morphology, hydrology, microclimate and mineralogy of the cave; for the first time in Georgia base camps were set up underground, and one expedition spent 198 hours below the surface. On the institute's recommendation the Council of Ministers of the Georgian SSR decided to open the monument to tourists. The tunnels were driven by the Tbilisi tunnelling trust, and the cave opened in 1975; on 4 July of that year the underground railway began running, served from 1975 to 2014 by the electric train "Turist" built at the Riga carriage works.

For the discovery and development of the cave the team of researchers, architects and engineers received the State Prize of the USSR. Givi Smyr (1946–2016) became director of the cave complex in 2001. In 1994 a crater on the asteroid Ida was named after the cave.

Tours run daily through six chambers, along about 1.5 kilometres of concrete paths with handrails, bridges and stairs; the underground train takes visitors to the chambers. Inside it is about 13 °C all year, so warm clothing is needed even in summer.

Abkhazia is an occupied territory. Under Georgian law entry to the region is lawful only through the Enguri crossing; entry from Russia is a breach of Georgian law. The actual conditions of movement change, so check the current rules before travelling.