Tbilisi – Capital of Georgia, City of Warm Springs
Tbilisi is a 1,500-year-old capital set in a Caucasus river gorge, its name meaning 'warm place' after its natural sulphuric springs. Medieval churches, Art Nouveau mansions, Soviet brutalism and 21st-century glass sit side by side across an extraordinarily layered cityscape.
Trip Stops
- 1
A 4th-century fortress on a rocky ridge above the Old Town, offering the finest panoramic views in Tbilisi over the Kura River and the Caucasus Mountains — reachable by cable car from Rike Park or a steep walk through the Old Town. Fun fact: Its name comes from the Mongols who conquered it — 'Narin Qala' means 'Little Fortress' in Mongolian, and it was ultimately destroyed not by an enemy but by a gunpowder explosion in 1827.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 2
A 20-metre aluminium statue on Sololaki Hill holding a bowl of wine for friends and a sword for enemies — the defining symbol of Georgian hospitality and fierce pride, visible from across the city. Fun fact: Erected in 1958 for Tbilisi's 1,500th anniversary, her design was kept secret until the unveiling — the city woke up one morning to find a giant aluminium woman standing on the hill above them.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 3
The ancient domed bathhouse district at the foot of Narikala, where natural sulphuric springs at 37–42°C feed Persian-style brick bathhouses — the very reason Tbilisi was founded and still a living tradition today. Fun fact: According to legend, King Vakhtang Gorgasali built his capital here after his falcon fell into a hot spring and emerged unharmed; Alexander Dumas visited in 1858 and wrote ecstatically about his bath experience.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 4
A 13th-century Georgian Orthodox church on a sheer cliff above the Kura River, beside an equestrian statue of Tbilisi's legendary founder King Vakhtang Gorgasali — with one of the finest views in the city back across to Old Tbilisi and Narikala. Fun fact: The church served as a prison under the Russian Empire and a theatre during the Soviet era, only returning to religious use in 1988, just three years before Georgian independence.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 5
One of Georgia's oldest churches, first built in the 6th–7th century and rebuilt many times — home to the country's most sacred relic, the Grapevine Cross of Saint Nino, fashioned from grapevines bound with her own hair. Fun fact: When the Persian Shah sacked and burned Tbilisi in 1795, massacring tens of thousands, Sioni Cathedral was one of the only buildings left standing.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 6
A bow-shaped pedestrian bridge of steel and glass spanning the Kura River, connecting Rike Park to Old Tbilisi — illuminated at night by thousands of LEDs into a shimmering spectacle, and now one of the city's most iconic landmarks since opening in 2010. Fun fact: Locals immediately nicknamed it 'the sanitary pad' when it was unveiled — today it is Tbilisi's most photographed structure and a symbol of the city's reinvention as a modern capital.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 7
A modern riverside park on the left bank of the Kura — the starting point for the cable car to Narikala Fortress, a 2-minute ride over the rooftops of Old Tbilisi with some of the best aerial views in the city. Fun fact: The cable car costs just 2.5 GEL (under $1 USD) one way, making it one of the world's great-value viewpoint experiences.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 8
A hand-built leaning brick clock tower in the Old Town, designed by beloved Georgian artist Rezo Gabriadze beside his internationally acclaimed puppet theatre — with a tiny angel emerging to ring the bell hourly and a full puppet show at noon and 7 PM. Fun fact: Gabriadze built the tower's mosaics and mechanical figures entirely by hand over several years; his 80-seat theatre has toured Avignon, Edinburgh, New York and Paris and is considered one of the world's greatest puppet theatres.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 9
Tbilisi's grand 1.5-km main boulevard lined with neoclassical and Art Nouveau buildings housing the Parliament, Opera House, National Museum and National Gallery — named after 12th-century poet Shota Rustaveli, author of Georgia's national epic. Fun fact: In April 1989 Soviet troops attacked peaceful demonstrators here with sharpened shovels and toxic gas, killing 21 people — a pivotal moment that accelerated Georgia's path to independence two years later.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 10
Georgia's premier museum, spanning 500,000 years of Caucasian history from the oldest hominid skulls found outside Africa to exquisite medieval goldwork and a sobering Soviet Occupation exhibition. Fun fact: The Dmanisi fossils — found just 90 km from Tbilisi — represent the earliest known humans outside Africa at 1.8 million years old, overturning decades of accepted theory about when our ancestors first left the continent.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 11
The largest cathedral in Georgia and the third-tallest Eastern Orthodox cathedral in the world, rising 101 metres on Elia Hill with a golden dome visible from almost every neighbourhood — built 1995–2004 as a symbol of national revival after Soviet rule. Fun fact: Construction was controversial from the start — the site overlapped an old Armenian cemetery, and the cathedral houses an entire complex: seminary, monastery, Patriarch's residence and several smaller chapels.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 12
Tbilisi's highest point — 'Holy Mountain' — reached by a funicular operating since 1905, with panoramic city views, an amusement park, restaurants and the Mtatsminda Pantheon where Georgia's greatest writers and artists are buried. Fun fact: The original funicular was built by Belgian engineers and is one of the oldest still-operating funiculars in the Caucasus; the Pantheon holds the poet Nikoloz Baratashvili and painter Niko Pirosmani.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 13
The most beloved market in the Caucasus — an open-air daily flea market where vendors spread Soviet memorabilia, antique jewellery, oil paintings, vintage cameras, military medals and icons across the Dry Bridge and adjacent parks. Fun fact: The market became a lifeline after the Soviet collapse in the 1990s, when families sold prized possessions simply to survive — some of the rarest Georgian antiques in existence have passed through here for a handful of lari.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 14
Sixteen colossal stone columns up to 35 metres tall rising above the Tbilisi Reservoir, covered in bas-reliefs of Georgian kings, saints and biblical scenes — one of the most dramatic and unexpected monuments in the former Soviet world. Fun fact: The monument was planned as a full circular colonnade but construction halted when the USSR collapsed in 1991 and funding vanished; its unfinished state above the reservoir has made it even more hauntingly powerful.
📍 Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
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