The Beatles Sculpture in Musicians' Park, Shekvetili

The Beatles sculpture in Georgia stands in Musicians' Park in Shekvetili, Guria, next to the Black Sea Arena and about 45 km north of Batumi. The Cartu Foundation built the park, opened it on 22 August 2016 and named the Beatles among the figures to be added that year. A sensor plays their music as you walk up.

Added to a park that opened half-finished

Musicians' Park opened on 22 August 2016 in a eucalyptus grove next to the Black Sea Arena concert hall. The Cartu Foundation paid for it and handed it to Ozurgeti Municipality at the ceremony, where Georgia's culture minister attended. On opening day there were 23 or 24 figures. The organisers read out a list of those still to come before the end of the year: George Balanchine, James Brown, Bob Marley, Miles Davis, 2Pac, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and the Beatles.

Netgazeti's opening report counted 23 sculptures and gave the target as 35 by the end of 2016, with the Beatles, the Georgian folk singer Hamlet Gonashvili and Balanchine among the additions. The Beatles group is now in place, and a Batumi travel guide now counts 37 metal sculptures. The day the four figures arrived has not been published.

Who made the figures

No sculptor is named for the Beatles or for any other figure. Asked in 2018, Kartu Group would say only that the sculptures were made in Europe by European sculptors. The same Batumelebi report found sculpture details that had been damaged in 2016 still unrepaired two years later. Do not confuse the metal musicians with the park's wooden carvings: those, and many of the benches, are cut by woodcarvers from storm-damaged trees on site.

Why the statue plays music

Every sculpture in the park has a motion sensor and a speaker. Walk up to a figure and a recording by that musician starts. The foundation described this pairing of statue and sound as something no other park had done. The Beatles share the grounds with Elvis Presley, Luciano Pavarotti, Whitney Houston and Georgian names such as Revaz Laghidze and Vakhtang Chabukiani.

Ureki, Shekvetili or Kobuleti?

The 2016 Sputnik Georgia report put the park in Ureki, the next resort along the coast. Georgia's national tourism site lists it under Shekvetili, the village that holds the Black Sea Arena. Travel guides also give its distance from Kobuleti, 15 km to the south, and from Batumi, 45 km. All of these describe the same 21-hectare park.

A free park that never closes

Black Sea Arena now manages the park, which also has three open-air stages. Entry is free. The national tourism site lists the park as open around the clock, but the arena's own page gives hours of 07:00 to midnight. A 1,300 m2 musical fountain stands at the entrance. The Travel Batumi guide adds that the figures are lit after dark and the fountain runs in season, and puts the taxi ride from Batumi at about 45 minutes and the Poti and Zugdidi minibuses from the Old Bus Station at about 1 hour 45 minutes.