The town unfolded slowly, its grandeur faded but unmistakable. Neoclassical
facades stood cracked and crumbling, their columns chipped, their windows
hollow. Sanatoriums lined the streets like sleeping giants, each one a
monument to a vanished era. I wandered among them, camera in hand, heart
thudding with curiosity.
In the 1950s, Tskaltubo welcomed over 125,000 visitors a year. It was a
scientifically planned resort, its bathhouses and sanatoriums arranged in an
amphitheatre-like formation amidst lush greenery. Stalin himself bathed here.
The architecture was bold, theatrical—a blend of Stalinist ambition and classical
grace.
But the fall of the USSR changed everything. The buildings were abandoned,
repurposed, forgotten. Some now housed families displaced by conflict. Others
stood empty, their staircases crumbling, their ballrooms silent.
I couldn’t resist. I climbed walls, ducked through broken doorways, tiptoed
across sagging floors. Inside, the air was thick with dust and memory. Faded
murals, rusted fixtures, echoes of laughter and pain. It was exhilarating and
eerie, like walking through a dream that had been left out in the rain.
Each building told a story—not just of healing, but of hubris, of collapse, of
resilience. I imagined the patients who once soaked in mineral baths, the
doctors who prescribed treatments, the architects who believed in beauty as
therapy. And now, silence.