Tbilisi city tour

How the day unfolds

Tbilisi doesn’t reveal itself in a straight line. The Old Town is built into a hillside, the river cuts it in two, and the layers of empire — Persian, Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet — sit on top of each other rather than next to each other. This tour is designed to make sense of that, on foot, in roughly four to five hours, with one cable car ride to handle the steepest climb.

1. Meeting point and orientation — Freedom Square

The tour begins where modern Tbilisi begins: Freedom Square (Tavisuplebis Moedani), with the gilded statue of St. George at its centre and the former Soviet city hall on its northern edge. Your guide will sketch out the route, point out where Rustaveli Avenue (the city’s main artery) heads north, and explain how the geography of the next four hours will work. From here, we walk downhill.

2. Sioni Cathedral

A few minutes’ walk brings you to Sioni Cathedral, the seat of Tbilisi’s bishopric for most of the city’s Christian history. The building itself has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that “6th century” is more about the site than the stones. Inside is the cross of St. Nino — made, according to tradition, from grapevines bound with the saint’s own hair. Georgia converted to Christianity in 326 AD, making it one of the first three nations in the world to do so, and this cross is the relic that ties that story to a physical object you can stand in front of.

3. Anchiskhati Basilica and the Gabriadze Clock Tower

A short walk along Shavteli Street takes you past the leaning, hand-built Gabriadze Clock Tower — the work of the late puppet master Rezo Gabriadze, who decided Tbilisi needed something whimsical to balance all the seriousness. Behind it stands Anchiskhati Basilica, built in the 540s, the oldest surviving structure in Tbilisi. The interior is dim, candle-lit, and almost always quiet. It’s the kind of place where you lower your voice without being told to.

4. Bridge of Peace and Rike Park

From the basilica, we cross the Mtkvari River on the Bridge of Peace — a glass-and-steel pedestrian span opened in 2010 and immediately argued about. Some Tbilisians love it; others nickname it the “Always Ultra” for its shape. Either way, the view from the middle is one of the best free photographs in the city: Metekhi Church on the cliff to your right, the Old Town climbing up to Narikala on your left. We continue into Rike Park, where the cable car station sits at the riverbank.

5. Cable car to Narikala Fortress

The ride takes about 90 seconds and gives you the entire Old Town from above — the corrugated rooftops, the wooden balconies stitched onto stone houses, the brick domes of the sulfur baths, the curve of the river. You step off at the foot of Narikala, the 4th-century citadel that every empire passing through the Caucasus wanted to control. The Persians built it. The Arabs expanded it. The Mongols sacked it. The Russians blew up its powder store in 1827. What you’re walking on now is mostly the surviving outer walls, plus the small reconstructed Church of St. Nicholas. The views down to the Botanical Gardens and across the city are the main event.

6. Kartlis Deda — the Mother of Georgia

A short walk along the ridge brings you to the aluminium statue of Kartlis Deda, raised in 1958 to mark Tbilisi’s 1,500th anniversary. She holds a sword in one hand and a bowl of wine in the other — the local explanation goes that one is for enemies and the other for guests, and a Georgian will tell you with a straight face that those are the only two categories that exist.

7. Descent into the sulfur bath district (Abanotubani)

From Kartlis Deda we walk down a steep cobbled path into Abanotubani, the district of the sulfur baths. According to legend, King Vakhtang Gorgasali was hunting here in the 5th century when his falcon caught a pheasant that fell into a hot spring and came out boiled. He founded the city on the spot. “Tbili” means “warm” in Georgian — Tbilisi is, literally, “the warm place.” The brick-domed bathhouses you see still work; Pushkin bathed here in 1829 and wrote that he had “never met anything more luxurious” than the baths of Tiflis.

8. Leghvtakhevi waterfall

Tucked into a narrow gorge just behind the baths is a 22-metre waterfall most visitors never realise is there. Five minutes off the main route, and you’re in what feels like a small canyon in the middle of the capital. Worth the detour.

9. Meidan Square and the caravanserais

Back in the Old Town, we end at Meidan Square — for centuries the trading heart of the city, where merchants from Persia, Armenia, Russia and the Ottoman empire bargained under the same arches. Two restored caravanserais now house galleries and craft shops. From here it’s a five-minute walk back to your starting point, or your guide can recommend where to stop for a glass of saperavi and a plate of khinkali before going on with your day.

Note: this is a private tour, so the pace and any small variations are flexible. If you want to spend longer at Narikala, skip a church, or add a stop at the Dry Bridge flea market, just tell your guide.