Coordinates 42°09'N, 41°40'EPoti is situated 312&_160;kilometres (194&_160;mi) west of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, in a marshy delta created by the major river of western Georgia, the Rioni, at its entrance into the Black Sea. The city lies at an altitude of two meters above sea level. A portion of Poti's environs recovered from the marshes now accommodate citrus plantation. The city is surrounded with the Kolkheti National Park. It is flanked by the small river Kaparchina to the south-east and the lake Paliastomi to the south-west. Some 5&_160;kilometres (3&_160;mi) to the south is the village Maltaqva, a local beach resort. Climate is humid subtropical, with mild and warm winters and hot summers. The average annual temperature is 14.1 °C; 2 °C in January, and 22.9 °C in July. Rainfall is abundant and reaches 1,960&_160;mm per annum.
The name Poti is apparently linked to Phasis, but the etymology is a matter of a scholarly dispute. "Phasis" (Greek F?s??) is first recorded in Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BC) as a name of the river, not a town. Since Erich Diehl, 1938, first suggested a non-Hellenic origin of the name and asserted that Phasis might have been a derivative of a local hydronym, several explanations have been proposed, linking the name to the Georgian-Zan *Poti, Svan *Pasid, and even to a Semitic word, meaning "a gold river."[1]
The recorded history of Poti and its environs spans over 26 centuries. In Classical antiquity and early Middle Ages, the area was occupied by the Greek polis of Phasis which was established by the colonists from Miletus led by one Themistagoras at the very end of the 7th, and probably at the beginning of the 6th century BC.
