The territory of modern-day Oni has been inhabited since the
Bronze Age. Archaeology revealed the artifacts of
Colchian culture, particularly a collection of Colchian coins dating back to the 6th–3rd centuries BC. Oni is first chronicled in the 15th century, though a legend has it that the town was founded by the 2nd BC king
Pharnajom of Iberia. Located on the crossroads from
Northern Caucasus,
Kartli (central Georgia),
Imereti (western Georgia) and Lower Rach’a, Oni developed into a typical late medieval commercial town and was contested between the
kings of Imereti and the princes of Rach’a. The town was absorbed by
Imperial Russia in 1810, and made it, in 1846 the administrative center of the
Racha Uyezd of the
Kutaisi Governorate. During the
Soviet Union, the town was united with a number of surrounding villages into the Oni district, which is currently administered as a part of the Racha-Lechkhumi and Lower Svaneti region. In recent decades Oni has suffered from earthquakes and a series of
avalanches. A particularly
severe earthquake occurred on 29 April 1991. The earthquake measured 7.0 on the
moment magnitude scale with a maximum
MSK intensity of IX (
Destructive), the most powerful ever recorded in the Caucasus Mountains, and caused significant damage to the infrastructure of Oni. Despite a post-Soviet tendency towards migration, Oni still retains a small number of Jewish families – remnants of once powerful and large historic
Jewish community, Georgia's third largest, after those of
Tbilisi and
Kutaisi. The
Oni Synagogue was built in the 1880s by a Polish architect and the builders were Greek Jews from Thessaloniki. Oni and its environs house a number of historical monuments, including the ruins of medieval forts and
Georgian Orthodox churches. A popular
spa,
Shovi, and Utsera are located some from Oni, on the southern slopes of the
Greater Caucasus mountains. The Racha Regional Museum, located in Oni, has an impressive collection of 14000 unique artifacts from the fields of archaeology, ethnography, numismatics, natural history, fine art, historical documents, manuscripts, and printed books. ==Demographic==