Tbilisi: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
The king was hunting, the story goes, and his falcon brought down a pheasant that fell into a spring and came out cooked. He moved his capital here and named the place Tbilisi, from the old Georgian word for warm. The springs are real: forty-degree sulphur water comes out of the ground under the old town and has been piped into bath houses for fifteen hundred years. Two hours, and most of it is uphill.
A short history of Tbilisi
According to legend, King Vakhtang Gorgasali was hunting in the area in the 5th century when his pheasant fell into a hot spring, and he decided to build a city here. The name comes from the Georgian word for warm, and the sulphur springs still flow in the baths of Abanotubani. His son Dachi moved the capital here from Mtskheta. The city was conquered many times, and in 1795 the Persian shah Agha Mohammad Khan burnt it. In 1801 Georgia was annexed by Russia, and Tbilisi became the centre of government in the Caucasus. Between 1904 and 1910 Jews from Akhaltsikhe built the Great Synagogue in the old town. In 1991 it became the capital of independent Georgia.
The ten best sights in Tbilisi
1NarikalaFree, a fortress from the 4th century, and the cable car is 2.5 lari
2Sioni CathedralFree, and a cross made of vine wood bound with its owner’s hair
3AnchiskhatiFree, from the 6th century, and the oldest church in Tbilisi
4Metekhi ChurchFree, on a cliff over the river, and it was a prison until 1937
5Holy Trinity CathedralFree, built in 2004, and the third tallest Orthodox church on earth
6Jumah MosqueFree, and Sunni and Shia pray in the same hall — the only one
7Tbilisi SynagogueFree, from 1904, and Georgia had no pogroms in 26 centuries
8National Museum15 lari, and the gold from 2400 BC is in the basement
9Museum of Soviet OccupationInside the National Museum, and it is one floor
10National Gallery10 lari, and Pirosmani’s paintings are the reason to go
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Tbilisi →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Tbilisi:
Free walking tours in Tbilisi
A city founded on hot water
The king was hunting, the story goes, and his falcon brought down a pheasant that fell into a spring and came out cooked. He moved his capital here and named the place Tbilisi, from the old Georgian word for warm. The springs are real: forty-degree sulphur water comes out of the ground under the old town and has been piped into bath houses for fifteen hundred years. Two hours, and most of it is uphill.
- Abanotubani · The brick domes in the ground are the roofs of the bath houses — the buildings are underground because the water had to be reached where it rises. Pushkin bathed here in 1829 and wrote that he had never encountered anything more luxurious, and he had been to the baths of Russia and Turkey.
- Chreli Abano · The one bath house with a facade, built in the 1840s in Persian style with blue tiles, because its owner wanted it to be seen rather than buried. Everything else in the quarter is a dome in the pavement; this one is a building.
- Metekhi Church · On the cliff where the royal palace stood, and the church that is there now is from the 1280s. The Soviets used it as a prison until 1937 and then as a theatre; Maxim Gorky was held in it, and so were a hundred thousand others over a century.
- Sioni Cathedral · Holds the cross of Saint Nino, who converted Georgia in the fourth century — two vine branches bound together with her own hair, which is why the arms droop. Georgia was the second country in the world to adopt Christianity as a state religion, in 337.
- Jumah Mosque · Sunni and Shia Muslims pray in the same hall here, which happens almost nowhere else in the world. There was a curtain between them until 1996, when the community took it down by agreement. The mosque stands two hundred metres from a synagogue and three hundred from a cathedral.
- Narikala · A fortress on the ridge since the fourth century, rebuilt by Persians, Arabs and Mongols in turn. A powder magazine inside it was struck by lightning in 1827 and the explosion took out most of the walls; what stands is what the blast left.
What the empires left
Tbilisi has been burned to the ground about forty times — by Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Turks and Persians again — and the last time was in 1795, when the Persian shah destroyed it entirely. Everything standing in the centre is therefore nineteenth century or later, built under Russian rule, and it looks European for that reason. Then came seventy years of the Soviet Union, and the buildings from that are the strangest in the city. Two hours, flat, and all of it on one avenue and its side streets.
- Liberty Square · It has been Erivansky Square, Beria Square, Lenin Square and now Liberty Square, and a statue of Lenin stood in the middle of it until 1991. The golden Saint George that replaced him was put up in 2006 and was made by Zurab Tsereteli, who had also made Soviet monuments.
- Rustaveli Avenue · A kilometre and a half laid out by the Russians in the 1850s, and every political turn in Georgia has happened on it — the 1989 massacre, the 1991 civil war that burned the buildings down one side, and the 2003 Rose Revolution, when demonstrators walked into parliament carrying roses.
- National Museum · The treasury in the basement holds gold work from the third millennium BC found in Georgian burials — animals made of sheet gold a few centimetres long, and the oldest of it predates the pyramids. The oldest wine residue ever found, from 6000 BC, was also found in this country.
- Museum of Soviet Occupation · One floor of the national museum, opened in 2006, and the first room is a railway carriage — the kind used for deportations. Georgia was independent from 1918 to 1921 and the Red Army ended that; about four hundred thousand Georgians were executed or deported over the following decades.
- National Gallery · Holds the Pirosmani room. Niko Pirosmani painted signs for taverns in exchange for food and wine, on black oilcloth because canvas cost money, and died in a cellar in 1918. He is now on the banknotes.
- Opera and Ballet Theatre · Built in 1851 in Moorish revival style because the Russian viceroy thought an oriental building suited the Caucasus. It burned down in 1874, was rebuilt identically, and burned again in 1973. Chaliapin sang here and so did Georgian polyphony, which is on the UNESCO list.
Wine, mountains and the old capital
Georgia has been making wine for eight thousand years — the oldest residue anywhere was found in a clay jar here, from 6000 BC — and the method has not changed: grapes go into a qvevri, a clay vessel buried to the neck in the ground, and stay there with skins and stems for six months. There are five hundred and twenty-five native grape varieties, which is a sixth of all the varieties on earth. Everything on this walk is outside the city. A full day.
- Mtskheta · The capital for eight hundred years before Tbilisi, and the place where Georgia converted to Christianity in 337 — the second country in the world to do it, after Armenia. It sits where two rivers meet, one clear and one muddy, and the line between them is visible from above.
- Svetitskhoveli · The name means "the living pillar". A Georgian Jew is said to have brought Christ’s robe back from Jerusalem, and his sister died holding it; she was buried with it here, and the cathedral was built over the grave. The present building is from 1029 and Georgian kings were crowned in it.
- Jvari Monastery · Built between 590 and 605 on the hill where Saint Nino is said to have raised her cross, and it is the model every Georgian church since has copied — a cross plan under a dome on an octagonal drum. Lermontov set a poem here and it is the view everyone knows.
- Sighnaghi · A walled town in the wine region, with twenty-three towers and four and a half kilometres of eighteenth-century wall, looking over the plain towards the Caucasus. It is the only place in Georgia with a twenty-four-hour marriage office, which is why it is called the city of love.
- Kazbegi · Three hours north along the military road the Russians cut in 1799, through a gorge the Persians and the Mongols both used. Mount Kazbek is 5,047 metres and the Georgians say Prometheus was chained to it; the church on the hill below is at 2,170 metres and takes three hours to walk to.
- Gergeti Trinity · A fourteenth-century church standing alone on a hill with a five-thousand-metre mountain behind it. In times of danger the treasures of Mtskheta, including Saint Nino’s cross, were carried up here for safekeeping — it is that remote, and it was chosen for that reason.
Getting to Tbilisi and getting around
- Tbilisi Airport · Bus 37 to Liberty Square is 1 lari and takes 40 minutes
- Central Station · The night train to Batumi leaves at 11 and arrives at six
- Didube · Marshrutkas to the mountains, and they leave when full
- Ortachala · The international station — Yerevan, Baku, Istanbul
Cheap eats in Tbilisi
Eight counters where Tbilisi eats standing. Khachapuri is bread with cheese baked in, and the Adjarian one comes open like a boat with an egg dropped in at the last second — you tear the ends off and stir. A khinkali is a dumpling you hold by the knot, bite, drink the broth from, and leave the knot on the plate; the waiter counts the knots.
- Dezerter Bazaar · Open 7 to 7, and the upstairs is cheaper
- Samikitno · Khinkali about 1.5 lari each, and five is a meal
- Machakhela · A chain, open late, and the Adjarian khachapuri is 15 lari
- Puri Guliani · Bread from a clay oven, and you watch it stuck to the wall
- Meidan Bazaar · Underground, spices and wine, and open until eight
- Shavi Lomi · About 60 lari a head, and book for the courtyard
- Barbarestan · About 80 lari a head, and booking is required
- Café Littera · In the Writers’ House garden, and the garden is the point
Museums in Tbilisi
- National Museum · 15 lari, closed Mondays, and the treasury is downstairs
- Museum of Soviet Occupation · Included in the museum ticket, and it is one floor
- National Gallery · 10 lari, closed Mondays, and the Pirosmani room is small
- Art Palace · 10 lari, a Moorish mansion, and theatre costumes in it
- Open Air Museum · 5 lari, closed Mondays, and the cable car goes near it
- Writers’ House · Free, and the café in the garden is open to all
- Chronicle of Georgia · Free, sixteen pillars 30 metres tall, and nobody is there
- Fabrika · Free, a Soviet sewing factory, and the courtyard is public
Nature and day trips near Tbilisi
- Mtatsminda Park · Free to enter, the funicular is 5 lari each way
- Turtle Lake · Free, a cable car up for 2.5 lari, and the city swims in it
- Botanical Garden · 4 lari, and the entrance is behind the fortress
- Vake Park · Free, the biggest park in the city, and a long stair up it
- Lisi Lake · Free, a path right round it, and the city runs there
- Kazbegi · Marshrutka from Didube, 15 lari, three hours
- Sighnaghi · Two hours east, a walled town, and the wine country round it
- Davit Gareja · Cave monasteries in a desert on the Azerbaijani border
Things to do in Tbilisi with kids
- Mtatsminda Park · Free to enter, rides a few lari each, and a ferris wheel on a cliff
- Cable car · 2.5 lari with a metro card, and three minutes over the river
- Rike Park · Free, a giant chessboard and a piano you walk on
- Open Air Museum · 5 lari, 70 real houses to walk into, and space to run
- Turtle Lake · Free, pedal boats, and the cable car is part of the trip
- Bridge of Peace · Free, and 30,000 bulbs in it flash a message every hour
Live music in Tbilisi
- Opera and Ballet Theatre · From 20 lari, and the building is Moorish from 1851
- Rustaveli Theatre · From 15 lari, and the rococo foyer is from 1901
- Marjanishvili Theatre · From 15 lari, across the river, and the work is newer
- Bassiani · About 40 lari, members and guests, and it opens at midnight
- Khidi · Under a bridge, concrete, and it goes until morning
- Fabrika · The courtyard has music most nights and it is free
Nightlife in Tbilisi
Georgian drinking is a supra, a table with a tamada — a toastmaster who decides what is drunk to and in what order, and nobody drinks between toasts. There are usually about twenty of them, they get longer, and the wine is amber because the skins stay in.
- Fabrika · The courtyard is the city’s living room, and it is free
- Aghmashenebeli Avenue · Restored, pedestrian, and the bars run its whole length
- Lolita · A terrace in Vera, open late, and a pool in the garden
- Chughureti · Courtyard bars in old German houses, and quiet
- Entrée · Wine by the glass from 5 lari, and several branches
- Dry Bridge Market · By day, and the park beside it has wine stalls in summer
Frequently asked questions about Tbilisi
What is there to see in Tbilisi?
The top sights in Tbilisi are Narikala, Sioni Cathedral and Anchiskhati. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Tbilisi?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Tbilisi without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Tbilisi?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Tbilisi, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: A city founded on hot water.
How do you get to Tbilisi and get around?
The main ways are Tbilisi Airport, Central Station and Didube. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Tbilisi, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Tbilisi that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Tbilisi for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.