Chiatura: the cable-car town visitors keep rating higher than they expected

On Tripadvisor the Chiatura cableways carry a 4.4 out of 5 average across 84 reviews and sit first among the six listed things to do in the town. That is a small sample by any standard, which tells you something in itself: this is not a place that has been processed into a tourist product. Visitors write about the valley views, the mosaics left from the Soviet period and the sense of a town carrying on around them rather than performing for them.

The old cars — the ones travellers nicknamed flying coffins — are largely gone, replaced from 2021 by modern cabins, with one restored vintage line kept alongside. Reviewers split on this. Some regret that the edge has been filed off; others point out that the system exists for miners and residents, not for the thrill of visitors, and that being able to ride it at all is the point. If you are coming for decay, you will find more of it in the buildings than in the ropeway.

Chiatura works best as a half-day out of Kutaisi rather than a destination in itself, and it pairs naturally with the abandoned sanatoriums of Tskaltubo, which several tour operators sell as a single day. Fares on the cable cars are nominal — one visitor writing in early 2025 put a ride at 50 tetri. Plan for uneven pavements, few signs in English, and very little in the way of cafés once you step away from the centre.