🏙️ Anaklia Tower on the Black Sea Coast: The Story of the Lazika Project and What Remains of It
🏙️ Anaklia Tower: The Essentials
An unfinished tower on the Anaklia seafront, known as the Eye of Anaklia. It was conceived as a tourist centre with an observation deck and a restaurant, part of the plan for a city called Lazika. Construction was never completed and the structure stands abandoned. It remains the most recognisable silhouette in the town.
A tower stands on the Anaklia seafront that people online more often search for as the Eye of Anaklia. That is not its official name but a popular one, and it is how the structure is known.
Its history is short and instructive: construction began as part of a much larger project, the project was halted, and the tower was never finished. Today it stands empty.
🏗️ What was planned here
The tower belongs to the Lazika project, the most ambitious building scheme in Georgia of the early 2010s.
The plan called for a new city of half a million people on the left bank of the Enguri. It was to be declared a free economic zone and made the country's financial centre, Georgia's second city by size. The initiative came from Mikheil Saakashvili.
Alongside the city came plans for the country's first deep-water port, though the idea of such a port dated back to the late Soviet period.
The tower had its place in this picture: a tourist centre with an observation deck and a restaurant, a logical addition to the resort side of the future city.
For a couple of years life in quiet, provincial Anaklia genuinely picked up. The shoreline was landscaped, several large hotels went up, and concerts and electronic music festivals were held here.
🧱 What was built and what is left
Construction never reached completion. The observation deck never opened, the restaurant never operated, and the interior was never fitted out.
Today the tower stands abandoned. No security, no lighting, no maintenance. Formally it is an unfinished building rather than a site to visit.
The silhouette, however, turned out memorable, and the tower appears in every photograph of Anaklia. Hence the popular name: the rounded upper section on a slender support really does suggest an eye raised above the seafront.
The practical upshot for a visit. Looking at the tower from outside is worth doing; it is the main visual feature of the town. Going inside is not: an unfinished structure with no maintenance and no lighting, and nobody is checking the state of the floors.
🌊 What surrounds it: a town that once had other plans
Anaklia is a village and a seaside climatic resort in Zugdidi Municipality, at the mouth of the Enguri, on the boundary with Abkhazia. Three metres above sea level, thirty kilometres from Zugdidi.
The permanent population is around 1,300. For a place where a city of half a million was planned, the figure speaks for itself.
The beach has a sandy bottom, which is unusual for the Georgian coast: Batumi, Kobuleti and Ureki have pebble or mixed shorelines. And there are few people on it.
The promenade, with palms, paths and benches, runs through the centre of town. It was built in the same years as the tower and was modelled on the Batumi seafront, only empty.
The ruins of a fortress from 1703 survive in the village itself, far older than anything in Anaklia's modern history.
A pedestrian bridge over the Enguri, another recognisable feature, cable-stayed and also from that era of landscaping.
How to photograph the tower
Since the main reason to come here is visual, photography deserves a word.
The best angle is from the promenade, where the tower reads together with the palms and the line of the shore. That is how it is most often shot.
Sunset works better on this subject than anything else: the silhouette against the sea, with the unfinished state lost in the backlight.
From the bridge over the Enguri the tower appears together with the town, the second most popular angle.
The emptiness is part of the frame. The promenade is almost always deserted, and photographs of Anaklia are recognisable precisely by that: resort infrastructure without the holidaymakers.
🚗 Getting there
Your reference town is Zugdidi, thirty kilometres from Anaklia. Marshrutkas run from there and take about forty minutes.
Zugdidi itself is served by marshrutkas and an overnight train from Tbilisi. From Kutaisi it is about two and a half hours, from Batumi around three.
In summer marshrutkas to Anaklia run more often; out of season, less. Check the schedule at the Zugdidi bus station the day before.
By car the road is straightforward and paved the whole way.
🧭 Where to stay
There is more accommodation in Anaklia than you might expect of a town of 1,300: some of the hotels were built in the same years as the tower.
Been to Anaklia? Leave a review on Madloba: tell us what state you found the tower in, whether anything on the promenade was open, and whether the town is worth several days.
Information is current as of August 2026. The condition of the site and the plans for the port project both change, so check current news before you travel.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
💬 On the promenade of the town of Anaklia, Zugdidi Municipality, Samegrelo region, at the mouth of the Enguri on the boundary with Abkhazia. Thirty kilometres from Zugdidi.
💬 It is a popular name rather than an official one. The rounded upper section on a slender support suggests an eye raised above the seafront. In search it is this name that people use most.
💬 No. Construction was never completed: the observation deck never opened and the restaurant never operated. The structure stands abandoned, with no security and no maintenance.
💬 Going inside is not advisable. It is an unfinished building with no lighting and no maintenance, and nobody is checking the state of the structure. Look at and photograph the tower from outside, on the promenade.
💬 A tourist centre with an observation deck and a restaurant. The tower formed part of the Lazika project: a new city of half a million people was planned for the left bank of the Enguri, with free economic zone status.
💬 Construction stopped after the change of government in 2012. The deep-water port project running alongside it was subsequently frozen and relaunched several times. In May 2024 the government announced that a Chinese-Singaporean consortium would acquire a 49 per cent stake in the port, though the overall fate of the project remains undetermined.
💬 The palm-lined promenade, a beach with a sandy bottom that is unusual for the Black Sea, a cable-stayed pedestrian bridge over the Enguri, the ruins of a 1703 fortress and a water park. The town is compact and everything but the water park is walkable.
💬 Around 1,300. For a place where a city of half a million was planned, the figure is telling.
💬 By marshrutka from Zugdidi, thirty kilometres and around forty minutes. Zugdidi is reached from Tbilisi by marshrutka or overnight train, and from Kutaisi in about two and a half hours. Services run more often in summer and less out of season.
5 comments
Log in to leave a comment