Alexandre Dumas began his many-month journey to the Russian Empire from St. Petersburg, where he arrived on June 22, 1858.
The author of “The Three Musketeers” was accompanied on the trip by Parisian artist Jean-Pierre Mounet. In Moscow, he was joined as a translator by a student of Moscow University, whom Dumas refers to only by his last name – Kalino. Dumas traveled to Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Saratov, Astrakhan, Kizlar, Derbent, and arrived in Tbilisi via Baku.
His notes, which made up the book “Caucasus”, introduced the world readers to the history and geography of Georgia, the life and customs of Georgians for the first time in the most thorough way.
The author of “The Three Musketeers” admired the beauty of the women of Western Georgia: “All the women of ancient Kolkheti are beautiful, – we wanted to say: more beautiful than Georgian women, but here we remembered in time that Samegrelo, Imereti and Guria were always parts of Georgia…
Magreli women, especially blondes with black eyes and brunettes with blue eyes, are the most beautiful creatures on the face of the earth.”
