Shekvetili ( ka, შეკვეთილი) is a village and sea resort in

Ozurgeti Municipality Ozurgeti ( ka, ოზურგეთის მუნიციპალიტეტი, ''Ozurgetis munitsipalit'et'i'') is a municipality of Georgia, in the region of Guria. Its main town is Ozurgeti. Ozurgeti municipality is located on the terr ...

Guria Guria ( ka, გურია) is a region (''mkhare'') in Georgia, in the western part of the country, bordered by the eastern end of the Black Sea. The region has a population of 113,000 (2016), with Ozurgeti as the regional capital. Geography ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

, located on the eastern

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...

coast, at the mouth of the Natanebi river. Shekvetili is home to the popular amusement park Tsitsinatela, large indoor venue Black Sea Arena, and the Miniature Park, an open-air exhibition of scale models of Georgia's architectural landmarks.

Geography

Shekvetili is a 5 km seaside strip dominated by the forest of pine trees, at 2 m above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardise ...

. It is located midway between the sea resorts of

Ureki Ureki ( ka, ურეკი) is a town and a seaside climatic resort on the Black Sea coast of Georgia. Located within Ozurgeti District in the region of Guria, Ureki is 60 kilometers north of Batumi and approximately 300 km west of the natio ...

and

Kobuleti Kobuleti ( ka, ქობულეთი ) is a town in Adjara, western Georgia, situated on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. It is the seat of Kobuleti Municipality and a seaside resort, visited annually by Georgians and many former Soviet Union ...

, 21 km east of

Ozurgeti Ozurgeti ( ka, ოზურგეთი ) is the capital of the western Georgian province of Guria. It was formerly known as Macharadze or Makharadze (named in honor of Filipp Makharadze). It is a regional center of tea and hazelnut processing. ...

, the main town of Guria. The resort is traversed by the S2 highway and is also served by the Natanebi

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a prep ...

History

Shekvetili served as an important trading locale within the southwestern Georgian

Principality of Guria The Principality of Guria ( ka, გურიის სამთავრო, tr) was a historical state in Georgia. Centered on modern-day Guria, a southwestern region in Georgia, it was located between the Black Sea and Lesser Caucasus, and was ...

in the 18th century. It was occupied by an Ottoman garrison in 1723 and passed into

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

possession in the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812. The Turks referred to it as Shefketil, while to the Russians it came to be known as the Fort of St. Nicholas. According to a contemporary account, "the stores for Fort St. Nicholas are landed upon an adjoining tongue of land, and transported thither on men's shoulders."

Battle of Limani (1829)

As a frontier fortress, Shekvetili was a scene of military confrontations between the Russian and Ottoman forces in the course of the

Russo-Turkish wars The Russo-Turkish wars (or Ottoman–Russian wars) were a series of twelve wars fought between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 20th centuries. It was one of the longest series of military conflicts in European histo ...

. During the 1828–29 conflict, the Fort of St. Nicholas was one of the bases for Russian operations into "Turkish Guria" ( Adjara). On 5 March 1829, Major-General Karl Hesse at the head of a force of 1,200 Russian regulars and some 1,500 Gurian militiamen stormed and destroyed a large fortified Ottoman camp at Limani, close to Shekvetili.

Battle of Shekvetili (1853)

Turkish troops storming Fort Shefketil (cropped)

During the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...

, on the night of 15–16 October 1853, a superior Ottoman force of three or five battalions, including ''

bashi-bazouk A bashi-bazouk ( ota, باشی بوزوق , , , roughly "leaderless" or "disorderly") was an irregular soldier of the Ottoman army, raised in times of war. The army chiefly recruited Albanians and Circassians as bashi-bazouks, but recruits ...

s'', led by Hasan and Ali Beys and Dede Ağa, natives of Çürüksu, stormed Shekvetili, held by two companies of Russian infantry and a local Georgian militia under Captain Shcherbakov, and captured the post after hours of a pitched battle. Atrocities committed by the ''bashi-bazouks'' in and around Shekvetili alienated local Muslim Georgians, who had initially welcomed the Ottoman advance. The Russian casualties amounted to nearly 1,000 killed, including Captain Shcherbakov and Georgian militia commander Prince Giorgi Gurieli, and 80 captured, while the Turks lost 32 dead and 59 wounded. The battle opened the Caucasus front of the Crimean War.

References

{{Authority control Populated places in Ozurgeti Municipality Resorts in Georgia (country) Georgian Black Sea coast Populated coastal places in Georgia (country)