Book Fund
The Scientific Library of the Dadiani Palace Historical-Architectural Museum preserves more than 31,000 books and periodicals.
A portion of the collection consists of Georgian- and Russian-language literature across diverse fields of science. Of particular scholarly value are the unique collections of books, journals, and albums belonging to the last ruler of Samegrelo, David Levan’s son Dadiani; Queen Ekaterine Chavchavadze-Dadiani; their children Niko, Andria, and Salome; as well as Achille Murat, son-in-law of the Dadianis. These volumes, printed in Paris, London, Milan, and Berlin, are in French, German, English, and Italian.
The library also preserves universal and specialized encyclopedic lexicons; literature on European and world history; works devoted to the First and Second French Empires; and studies concerning the life and activities of Napoleon Bonaparte. Of exceptional importance is the 32-volume collection of Napoleon I’s correspondence.
Unique within the collection is Andria Dadiani’s assemblage of chess books and journals, which reflects the history of chess in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Equally significant is the corpus of nearly one thousand scores of operas and operettas by Western European classical composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The library also safeguards ecclesiastical books and hymnals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, transferred and preserved from the churches and monasteries of Samegrelo by Akaki Chanturia, the founder and first director of the Samegrelo Museum.
