Europe Square

A square in the centre of Batumi, laid out in the 2000s as a formal civic space. Its dominant feature is a column about thirty metres high with a statue of Medea on top: the Colchian princess holds the Golden Fleece in her hands. The monument was put up in 2007, and its meaning is direct — by the myth the Argonauts sailed for the fleece to Colchis, on the territory of what is now western Georgia, and Medea helped Jason to obtain it. Around the column stand buildings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with turrets and stucco, some of them restored, some built anew in the same manner — in those years Batumi was being filled up with stylised imitations. On the same square there is an astronomical clock on the facade of one of the houses and several cafes with summer terraces. In the evening everything is floodlit, and the square becomes the main place for a stroll, along with the seafront.

On the map