Signagi Museum
Kakheti's national museum, pairing regional archaeology with a permanent room of Pirosmani paintings.
The museum in the hill town of Signagi was founded in 1947 as a local history and ethnography collection for Kakheti. It joined the Georgian National Museum network after the 2004 reform and reopened in 2007 following a thorough rebuilding, becoming the first regional museum in Georgia refitted to modern display standards. Its holdings run to tens of thousands of items drawn from excavations across eastern Kakheti, including the sites of Nekresi, Gremi, Khornabuji, Areshi and Gavazi.
The ground floor traces the archaeology of the region from the Bronze Age through the Iberian kingdom and the medieval period, with weapons, jewellery, coins, wine vessels and ecclesiastical objects. Upstairs a dedicated gallery shows sixteen canvases by Niko Pirosmani, the self-taught painter born at nearby Mirzaani in 1862, whose oilcloth scenes of feasts, animals and shopkeepers are among the best-known images in Georgian art. Windows on that floor look out over the Alazani valley towards the Caucasus.
Highlights
- Sixteen paintings by Niko Pirosmani in a dedicated upper gallery
- Archaeological finds from Nekresi, Gremi and other Kakhetian sites
- First Georgian regional museum rebuilt to modern standards, in 2007
- Views over the Alazani valley from the exhibition floor
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