Tbilisi in three days

Tbilisi has been a city on a trade route for fifteen hundred years, and it shows the whole sequence: Persian, Ottoman, Russian imperial, art nouveau, Soviet, and a fairly wild recent decade of architecture and restaurants. It is also a city built on hills, in a river gorge, which means it is walkable in short bursts and exhausting in long ones.

The way to plan it is by district and by time of day, which is what this is.

Before you start: two facts about the city

It is hot in summer. August afternoons regularly reach the mid nineties Fahrenheit (about 35°C) and the old town is stone with almost no shade. From late June to early September, walk in the morning and after five, and give the middle of the day to a long lunch, a museum or the room.

Everything is closer than it looks and steeper than you expect. The old town, Sololaki and Vera are all within twenty-five minutes of each other on foot, and the gradients between them are serious. Good shoes matter more here than in most cities.

Day one: the old town and the ridge

Morning, Abanotubani and the sulphur baths. Start at the domed brick roofs of the bathhouse district in the gorge under Narikala. The city is here because of these springs: the founding story has a king’s falcon fall into a hot spring, and Tbilisi means roughly warm place. Book a private room in one of the bathhouses for an hour, with a scrub if you want the full version. Early morning is the right time and the water is properly hot.

Walk up the Legvtakhevi gorge behind the baths to the small waterfall in the middle of the city, which most visitors never find.

Late morning, Narikala and the ridge. Take the cable car up from Rike Park, walk the fortress walls, then follow the ridge past the Kartlis Deda statue and down the path into Sololaki. This is the best twenty minutes of walking in Tbilisi and it is downhill, which is the correct direction.

Afternoon, the old streets. Sioni cathedral and the tiny sixth-century Anchiskhati basilica, the oldest surviving church in the city. The Bridge of Peace, which Georgians are divided about and which is genuinely useful. Then Shardeni and Jan Shardeni streets, which are the touristic core and which you can walk through in ten minutes without stopping.

Evening. Dinner in Sololaki or on Erekle II street. This is your first Georgian dinner, so this is the night for khinkali and a bottle of Saperavi. What to eat in Georgia covers the ordering.

Day two: the other Tbilisi

This is the day most visitors miss and it is the better of the three.

Morning, Sololaki and the entrance halls. Sololaki is the late nineteenth-century merchant quarter and its ordinary residential buildings have painted stairwells, stained glass and cast-iron balconies behind unmarked doors. Some are open, some are not, and a local guide who knows which is which changes this walk completely. It is the single best use of a guide in Tbilisi.

Late morning, the Dry Bridge market. An open-air flea market where people sell Soviet cameras, medals, porcelain, silver, records and a great deal of junk. It is a real market rather than a staged one, prices are negotiable, and it is the best souvenir hunting in Georgia. An hour is enough, two if you are the sort of person who finds things.

Afternoon, the museums, and choose one. The Georgian National Museum on Rustaveli holds the gold from the Colchis burials, which is extraordinary, and the Museum of Soviet Occupation upstairs, which is short, one-sided in a way the country has earned, and worth your time. Alternatively the Museum of Fine Arts for the Pirosmani collection, and Niko Pirosmani is a painter worth knowing about before you go.

Late afternoon, Vera and Vake. Walk up through Vera, which is the leafy inner suburb where Tbilisi actually lives, with the best coffee and the small independent shops. In summer this is where the shade is.

Evening, the Chronicle of Georgia. A short drive out to a hill above the Tbilisi Sea reservoir, where a set of enormous bronze pillars carved with kings and biblical scenes stands on a plateau. It was built in the 1980s, it is nearly always empty, and at sunset it is the most striking thing in the city. Then dinner back in Vera or Vake.

Day three: Mtskheta and a long lunch

Morning, Mtskheta. Forty minutes out, and the single best half day near the capital. Jvari monastery sits on the hill above the confluence of the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers, a sixth-century building that is essentially unaltered, and the view down over the old capital is the reason to go up first. Then Svetitskhoveli cathedral in the town below, eleventh century, the coronation and burial church of the Georgian kings, and still the spiritual centre of the country.

Both are working religious sites. Shoulders and knees covered, and women wear a headscarf at Jvari.

Lunch. In Mtskheta or on the way back, and long. This is the meal to make three hours rather than one.

Afternoon, back in the city, and free. Mtatsminda funicular to the park on the ridge for the view and the fairground, or the Turtle Lake path, or the botanical garden behind Narikala, or an hour in a wine bar working through eight small glasses to find out what you actually like.

Evening, the best dinner of the three. Tbilisi’s modern Georgian kitchens are the reason a number of our clients now come to Georgia for the food. Book this one.

Where to stay, by district

We would put a first-time visitor in Sololaki almost every time. Our boutique route uses the two or three buildings in the city that are genuinely worth their rate.

Eating and drinking, in one place

• Khinkali at a neighbourhood house rather than on Shardeni. Five to eight each, ordered by the count.
• A wine bar on the first or second evening, with small pours of both Saperavi and amber wine, so that you find out early which one you like.
• A modern Georgian kitchen for one dinner. These have improved out of recognition in a decade.
• A cellar restaurant for one dinner, where the recipes have not changed in fifty years.
• The Dezerter bazaar in the morning for cheese, churchkhela, spices and a look at what Georgians actually buy.
• Not Rustaveli Avenue, where the restaurants have photographs on the menu and somebody outside inviting you in.

What we would skip in Tbilisi

The Holy Trinity Cathedral, Sameba. Enormous, completed in 2004, and impressive as a piece of engineering. It is also newer than most people’s houses and it tells you nothing about Georgian architecture that Jvari and Svetitskhoveli do not tell you better. If you have three days, spend the hour elsewhere.

The Shardeni street bars. Fine for a drink, expensive for a meal, and not where Georgians go.

A day trip to Gori for the Stalin museum, unless you have a specific interest. It is a long half day for a museum that has barely been reinterpreted since it was built. Uplistsikhe, the rock-cut town nearby, is the better reason to make that drive. More of these judgements are in what we would skip in Georgia.

Getting around

The metro is cheap, fast and covers the main axis. Taxis booked through an app are inexpensive and are how most people move at night. Walking is the right answer within the old town, Sololaki and Vera, and the wrong answer between Vake and Abanotubani in August.

If you are on a wider Georgia trip, your driver is with you in the city, which we generally arrange for the airport and the Mtskheta day and leave out on the free days, because Tbilisi does not need a car.

Plan this trip

Tell us how many days you have in Georgia and we will build the Tbilisi part around the way the city actually works, with the right district to sleep in and the two nights that need booking. Free first outline, no obligation.

Start planning

Keep reading

• Georgia: the complete guide to planning your trip
• What to eat in Georgia, and how a supra works
• Georgia for the first time
• What we would skip in Georgia
• Classic Georgia in 9 days
• All our Georgia trips

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