Akaki Chanturia

Educated primarily in England, where he lived from 1904 to 1920, Chanturia returned to his native Samegrelo to established the Dadiani Palaces Museum in Zugdidi.

To achieve that goal, he moved to Batumi to work at the Rothschild factory, where he learned English and saved his pay to finance a trip to England.

He also studied archaeology, history, cartography, ethnography, museology, philology, art and folklore, and took part in scientific and artistic visits and excursions organised by the British Museum.

Chanturia returned to Georgia permanently in 1920, and settled in Senaki with his wife, an Englishwoman named Kate Walter Ball, whom he taught Georgian and Mingrelian.

Objects from the other mansions of the Dadiani family, and of the private collection of Prince Achille Murat-Dadiani, were transferred to the newly created museum.