This symbol is disturbing. The hotel’s faces are covered with mismatching loggias made from bricks and wooden boards so as to increase the surface of those makeshift apartments. Its occupants had understood a long time ago that they had to get accustomed to this place and all its accompanying troubles -no gas supply, but makeshift stoves laying on floor of the bathroom or of the balcony turned into a living room.

Let’s go back to the reality. While observing the comings and goings of clergymen in robes who came to collect materials before the building be pulled down, Aleko and Zaza, both security officers of the Iveria hotel in their thirties, explain that «the company in charge of the dismantling authorized monks to collect the doors, windows, woodworks, and glass of two floors of the hotel. They want to build an annex of their Shavnabada monastery, in Dariali valley in Teleti.»

Strange encounters in this hotel of unusual fate. Today, monks. Tomorrow construction workers. And yesterday, the Georgian president himself who came at the beginning of September to contemplate the deserted hotel. On this very day, Saakshvili was delighted to announce in front of a crowd of journalists that the administration had kept its word for the compensation, and that « by the end of 2006, Republic square will be entirely renovated.»

Today, the lifts are the only thing still working there. So as to stroll over the deserted floors, one has to step through the debris: some books here, and there a sink. But families left almost nothing of their scarce furniture.

Otar has the face of a quiet man who has had a busy past. He is indeed the living memory of the Iveria hotel. Recently retired, Otar cannot completely leave his hotel, and that’s why he still has on his keychain the keys to open the last flooor of the hotel.
Away from eavesdroppers, the marks of the Soviet past of the hotel and a bygone luxury : an unexpected dilapidated swimming pool and some remnants of an enjoyable era for some privileged customers – far away, very far away from the hotel’s reality from 1992 up to today.

« Iveria opened in 1967. It was a prestigious establishment where Frenchs, Germans, and Russians were staying. But no Georgians », reminds Otar. « The cost of one bedroom was ranging from 70 to 90 dollars a night, and the hotel could accommodate up to 500 luxury customers. When the refugees arrived, only one floor was still occupied by tourists.». Flamboyant hotel Intourist during the Soviet time with an unobstructed view of the Mtkvari river which separates the city in two parts, Iveria was constructed in 1966 by the Georgian architect Tony Kalandarishvili.

Goodnatured and with the features of a mama, Shoukri, 48 years old, was in charge of the hotel Iveria accounting over 25 years. Today unemployed, she shows signs of bitterness: « The State was paying for their electricity, sugar, and a pension. And today, they own a house.»

The last family left the Iveria hotel in September. The most reluctant ones would have been meeting only once on Republic square, mentions Irina, a 45 years old employee of the totalizator located at the foot of the Iveria hotel. As reminds Irina, most of people think that those families should never have been living there. And also they should not have left their native houses, thus reafirming -once again- the de facto invisible separation between Ankhazians and native Georgians.

Key symbol facing the main post office, the Andropov monument – evanescent sign of the country’s Soviet past, and the famous Rustaveli avenue, the Iveria hotel and its eighteen dilapidated floors had become a universe of its own. The government could not leave any longer this open wound right in the middle of Tbilisi. The eviction thus translating the wish to quickly regulate this area. But there remains an unknown: the staute of those IDPs.