Gruzja - sanatoria z czasów ZSRR - Redux

During the Soviet Union the Georgian town of Tskaltubo was a popular health destination famed for its therapeutic water and sanatoriums. During the heyday of the Soviet Union from the 1960's to 1980's some 100,000+ visitors a year including Stalin and his high-ranking officials from Moscow, frequented these facilities. Four trains arrived daily full of guests from Moscow. The town was renowned for its therapeutic radon-carbonate mineral spring water believed to treat an array of ailments. The general public of the USSR were obliged to visit sanatoriums annually to revitalize which was intended to sustain a healthy and productive workforce. Several masterplans by architects resulted in 22 different sanatorium buildings with hundreds of hotel rooms, spas, bathhouses and in-patient facilities. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the buildings were abandoned and fell into decay. Floors have been ripped up for firewood, the metal salvaged as scrap. In 1992 a war nearby in Abkhazia broke out. Displaced Georgians fled from the conflict and were given temporary shelter in Tskaltubo's unoccupied buildings. Twenty-five years later, hundreds of families remain living in these architectural remains of a Soviet past.