The small town that was once a world-class destination now a haven for dark tourism | World | News

In its heyday, Tskaltubo was one of the largest spa towns in the Soviet Union, famous for its healing mineral waters.

Founded on bubbling hot springs, Tskaltubo in Georgia once welcomed hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens on state-prescribed holidays every year.

The resort was so well known, that even Stalin himself had his own favourite sanatorium that he would visit regularly. However, when the USSR collapsed in 1991, the town’s sanatoriums slipped into anonymity and were left to rot for decades.

Today, tourism has all but vanished, and the remains of those extravagant spa resorts and mansions have been left a crumbling ruin.

“There were around 22 sanatoriums here in the Soviet era,” Lasha Kutateladze, a Tskaltubo local and a guide at Budget Georgia, told the BBC.

He added: “Trains would arrive from all over the USSR. Tskaltubo has more than 2,000 natural springs, and the mineral water is so special they used to claim that people arrived in wheelchairs and left on their own feet.”

Today, the eerie streets of Tskaltubo are one of the most-visited abandoned places in Georgia, as visitors known as dark tourists wander around the empty large sanatoriums and hotels.

The area has become home to hundreds of street dogs who are not shy about following tourists around.

Haunting images show a glimpse of what was once the “Riviera of the Soviet Union”, now left to crumble. In one of them, a frieze of Stalin can be seen in a bathhouse.

Sanatorium Medea was especially popular for its mineral water and spa facility and Stalin reportedly had a house near the hotel. Frozen in time and deep in the hillside, the once bustling hotel is now hidden in greenery.

Lying a relic of Soviet grandeur, people from nearby towns have their wedding photos taken at the iconic ruins.

While Tskaltubo’s train station still lies rusting, its windowpanes are shattered on cracked, ivy-clad floors. There were once-daily trains arriving packed with holidaymakers and workers from Moscow.

Efforts have been made to revive the wider town of Tskaltubo, which is still very much lived in. The refurbished Tskaltubo Spa Resort continues to operate, as do a few new hotels and restaurants.

In 2012, the then-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili vowed to turn the town into the “best place in Europe” within four years. However, 13 years on, little progress has been made, and it is unknown if the town will ever return to its former glory.