Georgian National Museum (Simon Janashia Museum)

About this place

Georgia's leading museum of history and archaeology, officially the Simon Janashia Museum of Georgia, housed on Rustaveli Avenue in a building designed by the architect Nikolay Severov in 1910 with decoration inspired by medieval Georgian architecture. Its permanent exhibition traces the country's material culture from the Bronze Age to the early twentieth century. The museum began in 1852 as the museum of the Russian Geographical Society's Caucasus branch, became the Caucasian Museum in 1865 and the Museum of Georgia in 1919. The Georgian government took much of its treasure to Europe after 1921; the scholar Ekvtime Takaishvili brought it back in 1945, and it has carried the name of the historian Simon Janashia since 1947. Its most precious exhibits include the early human fossils found at Dmanisi, the Akhalgori hoard of gold jewellery from the fifth century BC, a collection of some eighty thousand coins, medieval icons and goldsmiths' work, a bath mosaic from the fourth to fifth century, and a rich collection of Urartian inscriptions. Tickets are 40 GEL for foreign adults and 20 GEL for Georgian citizens, per the museum's website. It opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm, with last entry at 5:30 pm, and is closed on Mondays and public holidays. Allow at least two hours, and do not miss the gold treasury.