A Photo Story by Nino Apakidze
Abandoned Past of Guria

If you take a walk in the center of Natanebi, you will notice that the settlement differs from the typical Georgian villages, mainly by the solid signs of once lively rural life.

On the main street in Kvemo Natanebi, there are buildings still functioning and on the verge of demolition - a school, a kindergarten, a municipality building, a musical centre, a sports palace.

As time goes by, the traces of the previous decade slowly disappear into the ruins of Soviet brutalism.

The building is decorated with mosaic ornaments, which reflects the soviet aesthetics, and the characteristic propaganda narratives.
Natanebi, with 4500 residents till now, was one of the richest villages in Georgia.

At the entrance, you will see an abandoned department store building. According to the locals, Soviet products could be purchased here in short supply, making the place popular throughout western Georgia.

Kindergarten in Kvemo Natanebi
The kindergarten was built in 1986 by the former head of the collective farm, Givi Tsitlidze, who invited German artists to decorate the place.
The chairman of the collective farm had the ambition to make Natanebi a competitive, rich and distinguished village.
The historic part of the building is dysfunctional.


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The building stands alone as a piece of art, with its rooms decorated in glass mosaic and baths covered in ceramic

The ceiling decorated in plastic figures

Part of the Kindergarten is renovated and still functioning.


"The area we are occupying is enough for educational purposes, given that the rehabilitation and maintenance of the historic part is associated with considerable costs," explains the director of the kindergarten, Tea Samkharadze.



A room is fully painted in a thick felt is children’s favorite room to explore, according to the kindergarten teacher Ana Menabde, who has been working there for more than 50 years.






The building is abandoned now
The collective farm office built in 1953 was recently home for a modern administration office.

The forms and methods of Soviet rule are definitely not the subject of Nostalgia for the population of Natanebi. But they associate the current dysfunctional/demolished buildings as the signs of once active rural life and the current hopeless economical situation.

Since the 90’s, the place has been abandoned.
The Palace of Sports was first opened in 1983. International tournaments and competitions were held in the building. The complex, which included
various sections, hotel rooms, showers, is now non-functional.

Lia Giguashvili, a local resident of Natanebi, says that the sports complex does not attract the attention of the local government even during the elections period.

Nowadays, the majority of the population is engaged in agriculture in Natanebi. Like other villages, unemployment remains a major challenge, leading to an outflow of population from the countryside.


According to the National Statistics Office, the rural population in Georgia is declining year by year, mainly due to lack of infrastructure and jobs.

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