New Athos Cave

New Athos Cave is in Gudauta Municipality (Abkhazia), New Athos territory, on the northern slope of Mountain Iveria, on the watershed of rivers Manikvari and Psirtskhi.

The natural entrance of the New Athos Cave, a low-walled chasm opens at a height of 60 m above sea level. It is produced in the highly fractured limestones and consists of vertical (total depth 189 m) and horizontal (total length 3285 m) sections. The big halls are: “Abkhazia”, ​​“Georgian speleologists”, “Iveria”, “Moscow”, “Sokhumi”, “Tbilisi”, “Helictites”, petrified waterfall “Apsni” and others. Some of them are richly decorated with stalactites of different sizes and shapes, curtains, cascading decorations; There are strong plastic clays and abundant demolition material in individual halls.

The cave is distinguished by the big dimension of the halls. The bottom area of ​​the cave system is up to 50,000 m², the volume exceeds 1.5 million m³. In this regard, it is one of the largest caves in Europe, among the five largest karst caves in Georgia. In the southern halls of the cave, water gets inside during floods; The lowest floor of the cave is filled with water. The air temperature in the cave is 12.6–14.4°C, relative humidity is 94–100%. Crustaceans, arachnids, millipedes and others can be found in the cave. The cave was discovered and studied in 1961 by the Vakhushti Bagrationi Institute of Geography of the Georgian Academy of Sciences. It was opened for tourists in 1975.

In 1977, a group of researchers [Z. Tintilozov (Tatashidze), Sh. Kipiani, A. Okrojanashvili], architects and engineer-builders (V. Gotsiridze, G. Jakeli, E. Mamulia, I. Kozhukhov, G. Cimintia, R. Rizhinashvili, A. Gopi, V. Vouba, T. Markozashvili) were awarded the USSR State Prize for the discovery and study of the New Athos Cave.