Tbilishi

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Tbilishi
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With its dramatic valley setting, picturesque Old Town, eclectic architecture and superb eating and drinking opportunities, Tbilisi is the vibrant, beating heart of Georgia and home to more than one in three of its citizens. Add to that the pull of the city's hipster culture, its techno scene and general air of cool, and Tbilisi is confidently sealing its reputation as the South Caucasus' most cosmopolitan city.
While at first glance Tbilisi can seem both crowded and chaotic, many neighbourhoods retain a village-like feel with their narrow streets and small shops, while the Old Town is still redolent of an ancient Eurasian crossroads, with its winding lanes, balconied houses and leafy squares, all overlooked by the 17-century-old Narikala Fortress. Whichever side of the city you're looking for, you'll discover both on any exploration of Georgia's capital.
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Dominating the Old Town skyline, Narikala dates right back to the 4th century, when it was a Persian citadel. Most of the walls were built in the 8th century by the Arab emirs, whose palace was inside the fortress. Subsequently Georgians, Turks and Persians captured and patched up Narikala, but in 1827 a huge explosion of Russian munitions stored here wrecked the whole thing, and today it's a rather picturesque ruin, with only its walls largely intact.
For most visitors the highlight here is the hall of wonderful canvases by Georgia’s best-known painter Pirosmani (Niko Pirosmanashvili, 1862–1918), ranging from his celebrated animal and feast scenes to lesser-known portraits and rural-life canvases. There’s also a good selection of work by other top 20th-century Georgian artists Lado Gudiashvili and David Kakabadze. Enter from the park beside Kashveti Church.
Tbilisi's most exhilarating ride is its massively popular cable car, which swings from the south end of Rike Park high over the Mtkvari River and the Old Town up to Narikala Fortress. To ride it, you need a Metromoney card, available at the ticket offices if you don't have one. Expect to wait in the summer months, though the line moves fairly quickly.
The brick domes rising here are the roofs of subterranean bathhouses, the Abanotubani. Alexanders Dumas and Pushkin both bathed in these sulphurous waters, the latter describing it as the best bath he’d ever had. Outwardly more impressive than the others, the above-ground Chreli Abano thermal baths have a Central Asian feel to their blue-tile facade.
The impressive high-arched Parliament building has seen many momentous events, including the deaths of 19 Georgian hunger strikers at the hands of Soviet troops on 9 April 1989, and the Rose Revolution on 22 November 2003, which saw Eduard Shevardnadze abruptly forced from power. In 2012 Mikheil Saakashvili moved Georgia's parliament to Kutaisi, but it returned here in 2019 and this building is now once again home to the Georgian legislature. As such it is not open to the public.
This collection of traditional, mostly wooden houses, from all around Georgia, is spread over a wooded hillside with good views, and makes for an enjoyable visit. The most interesting exhibits are in the lower section (near the entrance), where the buildings are kitted out with traditional furnishings, rugs and utensils, and the attendants can often explain things in English.
The major highlight of the impressive national museum is the basement Archaeological Treasury, displaying a wealth of pre-Christian gold, silver and precious-stone work from burials in Georgia going back to the 3rd millennium BC. Most stunning are the fabulously detailed gold adornments from Colchis (western Georgia). On the top floor, the Museum of Soviet Occupation has copious detail on Soviet repression and local resistance to it.
The landmark Metekhi Church, and the 1960s equestrian statue of King Vakhtang Gorgasali beside it, occupy the strategic rocky outcrop above the Metekhi Bridge. This is where Vakhtang Gorgasali built his palace, and the site’s first church, when he made Tbilisi his capital in the 5th century. The existing church was built by King Demetre Tavdadebuli (the Self-Sacrificing) between 1278 and 1289, and has been reconstructed many times since.
This beautiful conversion of the former Tbilisi Cadet Corps building has been given over to displays of work by the museum's founder, Zurab Tsereteli, the Moscow-based Georgian who is one of Vladimir Putin's favourite artists. The sculptures and paintings here are characteristic of his grandiose, larger-than-life work found in many countries, though this space also hosts very good temporary exhibits, which are arguably worth more of your time than the permanent collection.
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Left : Tbilisi's Rooms Hotel - along with its neighbor, Hotel Stamba - has been credited with sparking the bohemian renaissance of the neighborhood of Vera.
Right : Hotel Stamba is among the most popular of Georgia’s new hotels, where legal locals are often to be found alongside foreign visitors at its bar and restaurant.
The buzzing courtyard at Fabrika: this former sewing factory is now a thriving hub for artist studios, co-working space, cafes, bars and a hip hostel. This cool ‘hot’ spot also regularly hosts one off events reflecting the eclectic community.
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Tbilisi's art nouveau Sololaki district is full of hidden, vintage-style cafés. This one, Café Linville, is located on the second floor of a 19th century building.
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A vendor at the sprawling Dry Bridge Flea Market, Tbilisi's best venue to find antiques, jewelry, souvenirs, contemporary art, vintage furs, and more.
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The clock tower in front of the Gabriadze Theatre, designed by puppeteer and illustrator (and beloved Georgian cultural titan) Rezo Gabriadze.
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Tbilisi has a thriving new bohemian scene, from nightclubs to speakeasy cafes. This guide highlights the coolest hotspots that take in the true essence of the city.
Tbilisi’s recently renovated Kala district – the heart of its old town – is characterized by its pastel colors and traditional carved wooden balconies.
Few cities are as gleefully chaotic as Tbilisi, the capital of the Black Sea nation of Georgia. A onetime Silk Road capital, this sprawling city of 1.1 million is as eclectic as it is dynamic. The Old Town — also called Kala — with its traditional pastel houses and wooden balconies, flows seamlessly into the Art Nouveau neighborhood of Sololaki, where every ezo (courtyard) seems to reveal a new speakeasy bar or tucked-away café. You can spend the day hitting the museums and theaters housed in the impressive neoclassical architecture along Rustaveli Avenue, or spend your nights dancing until dawn at powerhouse nightclubs like Bassiani , located underneath a historic soccer stadium. While the city is small enough to be covered in a weekend, its architectural eclecticism, thriving restaurant and bar scene, and wealth of cultural offerings make it worth a much longer stay.
In the past few years, Tbilisi has been undergoing something of a bohemian renaissance. Several of its midcentury disused factories have been repurposed into hotels, bars, galleries, and vintage concept stores that act as cultural hubs for trendy young Tbiliseli. The first — and most famous — of these was the Rooms Hotel , intentionally reminsicent of the ornate Art Nouveau grand hotels of Europe and is as famous for its high-end cocktail bar and European-fusion food, as it is for its upscale accommodation. Later, the slightly more modern (but no less whimsical) Stamba Hotel , which is located in a former printing house, opened next door (there are also plenty of international-branded hotels here, including the Sheraton, Radisson, and Marriott). A five-minute walk away, the labyrinthine Wine Factory N1, is quickly establishing itself as the new must-go complex in Tbilisi. Located in a 19 th century winery that was closed to the public for most of the past century, Wine Factory N1 offers outdoor cocktail bars and some of the city’s most innovative Georgian food. (If you can, get a tour of the cellars, which boast wine collections that, according to local legend, once belonged to Stalin and Napoleon.)
Across the river, the slightly younger-skewing Fabrika complex — as the name suggests, located in an old sewing factory — boasts a hostel, a slightly more upmarket boutique hotel, several bars, and the Impact Hub co-working space. Grab a cold local beer (bohemian restaurant Shavi Lomi has just debuted what it calls “Georgian’s first craft beer”) or glass of delicious red Saperavi wine and people-watch into the wee small hours — or at least until you head to the all-night raves at Bassiani nightclub nearby.
Georgian food has long been storied throughout Eastern Europe for its freshness and delicate balance of herbaceous flavors — here, coriander is often used as a salad green rather than a garnish. This fame has only intensified now that Tbilisi’s has undergone a culinary renaissance over the past few years, with a cornucopia of local restaurants reimagining Georgian classics like grilled meats in sour plum sauce, salty khachapuri cheese breads, and red bean lobio stew. The most famous of Tbilisi’s culinary impresarios is easily Tekuna Gachechiladze, whose Culinarium Cooking School and Café Littera launched a craze for Georgian-fusion cusine (Gachechiladze’s most famous dish is her chakapuli : a sour-plum-and-tarragon stew, traditionally made with lamb, that she reworks as a base for Black Sea mussels). Gachechiladze’s culinary empire also includes the hipster comfort-food joint Khasheria , just across from the city’s natural sulfur bathhouses, and the kitschy Mexican-Georgian crossover Taqueria Teko's Tacos , located in the Wine Factory Complex. Don’t miss the similarly-innovative Keto and Kote — named for characters from a Georgian opera, and located in a hidden 19 th century palace that once belonged to the Bagrationi princes — which offers modern-fusion Georgian fare in a garden with panoramic views of the city center.
Few places showcase Tbilisi’s history as a cultural crossroads as neatly as the sprawling flea market at the Dry Bridge, an overpass located a few streets behind Rustaveli Avenue. The daily market (weekends tend to have more vendors) sells everything from 19 th century European porcelain to modern Dagestani jewelry to Georgian enameling, antique musical instruments to wolf pelts, to works by contemporary artists. Come prepared with a few phrases of Georgian, and receive a history lesson from the usually-friendly vendors about anything from Soviet-era medallions to Khevsur embroidery. Haggling is expected, even welcomed, but prices are generally fair.
Each of Tbilisi’s neighborhoods — from the imposing neoclassical buildings of Mtatsminda to the warren-like Kala — has a completely different history and feel. Make the most of these contrasts by taking an architectural walking tour to learn about different stages in the city’s development. Numerous Art Nouveau tours have sprung up to explore the ornate buildings and intricately-painted entrance halls of Sololaki, many of which have been recently restored, while tour company Brutalist Tours takes tourists to the city’s suburbs and outskirts to engage with monuments of its 20 th century past.
The narrow warren-like streets of Tbilisi's historic neighborhoods, including Sololaki, Mtatsminda, and Vera – are filled with an eclectic mixture of architectural styles, from art nouveau mansions to traditional Georgian brickwork.
Ubiquitous in cities like New York and London, speakeasy culture has also made inroads in Tbilisi. Some of the city’s best bars and restaurants are either wholly hidden or at least sparsely marked. Check out Sofia Melnikova’s Fantastic Douqan , in the rear courtyard of the city’s literature museum (but only accessible by following several narrow alleyways into what looks like an abandoned parking lot, then daring to step through an unprepossessing garden door). Or head to Woland’s Speakeasy — named for a character in iconic Russian novel The Master and Margarita, and located underneath a kitschy American-style bar in Sololaki — which sells cocktails named after characters in Russian novels. Or visit the subtly-signposted but still discreet Cafe Le Toit, Pur Pur and Linville — three Victorian-chic cafés in Sololaki located on the upper floors of their respective Art Nouveau mansions.
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