The Kingdom of Colchis: Jason, Medea and Ancient Kutaisi

The Greeks thought of the eastern Black Sea shore as the far end of the world, and the Colchis kingdom they placed there gave their poets a golden fleece, a king named Aeëtes and Medea, one of tragedy’s most unsettling heroines. That country is now western Georgia, and Kutaisi, its old royal city, has carried the association for more than two thousand years. Reading the Colchis kingdom through what the myths remember and what archaeologists have actually excavated turns a drive through Imereti into a journey through layers of time. It is also the thread that ties together the western leg of our 22-day small group tour of the Caucasus, which crosses from Kutaisi to the Black Sea coast at Batumi.

Where was the Colchis kingdom, and why did the Greeks sail there?

Colchis was never a tidily bordered state. Ancient writers used the name for the lowlands and foothills along the eastern Black Sea, broadly the country we now call western Georgia, and the Colchis kingdom of the myths was Greek shorthand for a rich, half-understood land at the end of a long voyage. Its heartland was the valley of the Phasis, today’s Rioni, which runs down from the high Caucasus and straight through Kutaisi. The river gave Colchis a road to the sea and fertile alluvial soil, and, by Greek tradition, its name to the pheasant, the bird of the Phasis.

The geography explains the fascination. Behind a flat, humid coastal plain, forested hills climb towards the Greater Caucasus. The climate is subtropical, the vegetation dense, and the mountain streams carry metal down from the heights. By the sixth century BC, Greek trading colonies, Phasis at the mouth of the Rioni among them, had been founded along this shore, so the myths grew up around a coast that Greek merchants really knew.

When is the best time to see western Georgia?

May and October, the months our tour runs, both suit western Georgia well. This is the wetter, greener half of the country, so a light waterproof is worth packing in any season. The 2027 departures leave on 14 May and 4 October, and for Georgia-wide questions such as visas and money, our questions about Georgia covers the ground.

Jason, Medea and the Golden Fleece: what the myth remembers

In outline, Jason sails with the Argonauts to Colchis to claim the Golden Fleece from King Aeëtes. Aeëtes’ daughter Medea, a priestess and sorceress, helps Jason through the impossible tasks her father sets, then flees with him across the sea. The fullest surviving telling is the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, composed in the third century BC, but Colchis was part of Greek tradition long before that. Aeëtes appears in Homer’s Odyssey as the brother of Circe, Pindar tells the Argonaut story in a fifth-century BC victory ode, and Euripides’ Medea, first staged in 431 BC, made the Colchian princess one of the most haunting figures in European drama.

These are Greek accounts of a people the Greeks did not fully understand. Colchis is wealthy and dangerous, a land of sorcery seen from the outside, and that outsider’s view is worth keeping in mind when you stand in Kutaisi and wonder what the Colchians themselves might have said.

The fleece may in fact have a practical origin. Strabo, writing around the turn of the first century AD, describes exactly that method, and his account is usually linked with the Svans of the high valleys. Whether or not it explains the myth, it points to something real: the mountains behind Colchis were a source of metal. Our article on history and legend in the landscapes of Georgia follows how stories like this settle onto the land.

What archaeology adds: Vani and the goldsmiths of Colchis

The archaeological evidence gives the Colchis kingdom a footing beyond legend. Its best-studied site is Vani, on a steep hillock roughly 40 kilometres south-west of Kutaisi, where formal excavation began in 1947. The settlement was occupied from the eighth century BC until it was destroyed in the middle of the first century BC. Over that span it was first a cult centre, then a political and administrative hub with rich burials, and finally a fortified temple-city with walls, sanctuaries and a foundry for casting bronze statues.

The graves yielded fine gold jewellery alongside imported Greek pottery, evidence that the Colchians were trading partners of the Greek world and skilled metalworkers in their own right. Finds from Vani are displayed at the Vani Archaeological Museum and at the Museum of Georgia in Tbilisi.

Does the tour visit Vani or other Colchian sites?

Vani itself is not on the itinerary, but Colchian material is easier to meet than that suggests. On day 7 the group visits the Simon Janashia Museum of Georgia in Tbilisi, whose collections cover the country’s principal archaeological finds, and your local guide can point out the Colchian pieces. Later the route reaches Kutaisi, the Colchic forest at Sataplia and the Roman fortress of Gonio-Apsaros on the Black Sea coast. If Vani is a priority, ask a Tour Specialist about a private departure, which can be tailored to your interests.

Kutaisi: a city that outlived the myth

Kutaisi is one of Georgia’s oldest cities, its history usually put at close to three thousand years, and local tradition identifies it with Aia, the legendary capital of Aeëtes. Our route reaches it on day 10, coming north from Akhaltsikhe and the rock-cut settlement of Vardzia by way of the Borjomi Valley and the Rikoti Pass, with a walk in Borjomi Park to taste the local mineral water on the way.

The real history is as rewarding as the legend. Kutaisi was chosen as a royal residence in the mid-eighth century, became the capital of the united Georgian kingdom in the early eleventh century under Bagrat III, and lost that role to Tbilisi in the twelfth century. It returned as capital of the Kingdom of Imereti from the fifteenth century until Russian annexation in 1810.

The most visible reminder of that medieval role is Bagrati Cathedral, completed in the early eleventh century on the hill above the Rioni. A contested modern reconstruction led UNESCO to remove it from the World Heritage list in 2017, a useful reminder that in Georgia, how much to rebuild is still a live argument.

How much time do we spend in Kutaisi?

One night, with parts of two days. The group arrives around noon on day 10 after the drive from Akhaltsikhe, visits Sataplia that afternoon and then takes a walking tour of Kutaisi’s old town. Gelati Monastery follows on the morning of day 11, before the long drive to Mestia, which is about 220 kilometres and 4.5 hours by road.

Gelati Monastery: where the medieval kingdom found its voice

A short drive from Kutaisi, Gelati shows the Georgian kingdom at its most confident. King David IV, known as David the Builder, began work in 1106 near his capital, and the main church was completed in 1130 under his son Demetre. David intended far more than a place of worship: Gelati housed an academy, one of the great cultural centres of medieval Georgia, where scholars taught, translated and copied manuscripts.

The architecture is the masterpiece of Georgia’s golden age: large blocks of smoothly hewn stone, balanced proportions and blind arches along the exterior walls, with a main church of the cross-in-square type. Inside, wall paintings from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries surround a twelfth-century apse mosaic of the Virgin and Child flanked by archangels. According to tradition, David was buried in the south porch so that everyone entering the monastery would pass over him. Gelati has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1994.

For readers following the Colchis theme, Gelati is a useful contrast. The Colchis kingdom belongs to the ancient world of myth and metalwork, while Gelati belongs to a medieval Georgian kingdom that, more than a thousand years later, made the same countryside its cultural centre. From here the road climbs through the Enguri Canyon towards the tower villages of Svaneti, where a very different Georgia begins.

Sataplia: a landscape older than any kingdom

The Sataplia Nature Reserve, in the hills just outside Kutaisi, adds a far deeper time frame. Its limestone karst holds a small cave with stalactites and a shallow underground lake, a glass viewing platform over the forest and fossilised dinosaur footprints, preserved in the rock under a protective covering, that date from the Cretaceous, roughly 100 to 120 million years ago. The reserve was established in 1935, after a Kutaisi teacher and naturalist, Petre Chabukiani, found the tracks while searching for evidence of early humans.

Why include dinosaurs in an article about a kingdom? Because the same limestone, caves, rivers and rain that shaped this landscape produced the abundance that so impressed the Greeks, and at Sataplia even three thousand years of human history feels recent. The forest around the reserve is Colchic forest, the humid, broadleaf woodland that gave this corner of the world its lush reputation.

How demanding is the Kutaisi day?

Day 10 is a Level 2 (Moderate) day: a morning drive, then two walking visits. The whole tour carries that grading, which means 3 to 5 hours of physical activity a day, the equivalent of up to 8 kilometres of walking on uneven ground, with stairs and your own luggage to manage. Our guide to what a 22-day Caucasus journey involves explains the pace in more detail, and the Tour Specialists can talk through any particular concern.

Batumi: the western edge of the Colchis kingdom

The Colchis story does not stop at Kutaisi. It runs down the Rioni to the sea, and the sea is where the Greeks themselves arrived. The route from Mestia to Batumi on day 14 crosses Samegrelo, the low, humid country that formed the heart of the old Colchian plain, with a visit to the Dadiani Palace, seat of the lords of Samegrelo, along the way. Batumi lies on the southern stretch of the coast that ancient writers linked with Colchis, and today it is a subtropical seaside city with a boulevard, a restored old town and a botanical garden.

On day 15 the group drives south to Gonio-Apsaros. Its square wall, roughly 245 by 195 metres and up to five metres high, still stands, and its ancient name is tied to the myth: Apsyrtus, Medea’s brother, was said to be buried here, and the Byzantine historian Procopius identified Apsaros as his tomb. A later tradition adds another claim, that the fortress holds the tomb of the Apostle Matthew. Few places show so plainly how many layers of belief can settle on a single piece of ground.

The rest of day 15 is deliberately unhurried. After the morning at Gonio-Apsaros, the botanical garden and a khachapuri lunch, the afternoon is left free to keep walking the seafront boulevard or simply rest at the hotel. The group spends two nights in Batumi before the early start for Tbilisi on day 16.

Two days here close the Georgian chapter fittingly. After following the Colchis story from the Rioni valley and the hills around Kutaisi, you arrive at the sea the Argonauts crossed, and it is easy to see why the Greeks felt they had reached the end of their world.

Reading western Georgia more slowly

The Colchis kingdom rewards slower travel. It asks you to hold three things at once: a myth told by outsiders, a body of archaeology that speaks for the Colchians themselves, and a living Georgian landscape that has outlasted both. That is the kind of understanding our Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia small group tour is built to encourage, with an Odyssey Program Leader, local guides in each city and a group of 6–14 travellers, solo travellers welcome. To see how western Georgia fits into the full journey from Baku to Yerevan, our Caucasus itinerary for mature travellers sets out the order of the route and the reasoning behind it.