Dadiani Palace

The Italian missionary Arcangelo Lamberti, who visited Georgia in the 17th century, wrote that “the prince has more than 50 palaces, between which the Zugdidi palace is most beautiful: it is built of very good stone, its inner chambers are decorated in Persian” ^[1] .

The present palace was erected in 1873-78. for Princess Catherine Dadiani . When designing, architect Edgar J. Rice pushed away from the Vorontsov Palace in Alupka ^[2] . The second palace was erected in the 1880s. for her son, the last Mingrelian ruler , designed by Leonid Vasilyev.

After the abdication of Nikolai Dadiani from the throne (1866), his sister Salome left with her mother in Paris , where on May 18, 1868 she married the grandson of Marshal Murat , Prince Ashil Murat , who brought several Bonapartist relics to Megrelia , including one of the three posthumous masks of Napoleon . Now it is exhibited in the historical museum, which occupies part of the palace complex.

In front of the Dadiani Palace.

The museum was founded on the initiative of the ruler of Megrelia David Dadiani in 1849 on the basis of objects from the treasury of the ruler and Georgian antiquities. Today, the museum contains up to 41,000 exhibits - rare samples of the Georgian national culture. Among them are the inventory of the Tagilon treasure (1st millennium BC), the golden antique mask, the icon of the mother of the Georgian queen Tamar (12th century), the monuments of antiquity that fell into Georgia after the fall of Constantinople, the martial European weapon of the Middle Ages, works paintings and drawings by Western European masters.

The extensive Zugdidi Botanical Garden spread around the palace, with the help of gardeners discharged from Europe by mother Salome, Ekaterina Alexandrovna Chavchavadze-Dadiani, the sister of Nina Griboedova . The garden area is 26.4 hectares.

In the mid-1990s. The great-grandson of Prince Ashil Murat and Princess Salome - Prince Alain Murat, together with his wife Princess Veronica (nee de Chabot-Tramecour) and daughter Princess Matilda moved to Zugdidi for permanent residence. They founded the fund "Murata in Georgia", and then began to try through the European Court to obtain the property of the princes Dadiani, including the palace. However, there is the Georgian Fund for the Salvation of Dadiani Palaces, whose representatives indicate that in 1919, the heirs of Dadianov officially renounced their rights to the palace complex.

During a visit to Zugdidi on May 26, 2007, the President of Georgia announced that work would be carried out to restore the palace of the princes Dadiani:

“We are going to restore the only preserved European palace of Georgia - the palace of the Dadiani princes, so that both the residents of Zugdidi and the rest of Georgia are proud of them ... We will start the restoration of the palace in the coming months. This is a costly project, but I believe that this palace is the pride of Georgia and a very significant part of its history. ”

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