Travel and Tourism in Georgia

Rustaveli Avenue and the City Center

Rustaveli Avenue, the grand boulevard that runs through the heart of modern Tbilisi, is the city's civic spine. Named for the medieval poet Shota Rustaveli, the avenue is lined with neoclassical and art nouveau buildings dating from the Russian imperial period, interspersed with Soviet-era cultural institutions and contemporary commercial development. The National Museum of Georgia on Rustaveli Avenue is essential for understanding the sweep of Georgian history, with collections ranging from Paleolithic artifacts to a remarkable treasury of medieval gold and silver work, medieval manuscripts, and the extraordinary Dmanisi fossils — the skulls of early Homo erectus found at the Dmanisi excavation site south of Tbilisi, among the oldest human fossils found outside Africa.

Also on Rustaveli Avenue are the Rustaveli Theatre, one of Georgia's premier theatrical venues; the opera house, a grand nineteenth-century building that hosts the Georgian National Ballet and Opera; and the Kashveti Church of Saint George, a relatively modern (early twentieth century) church that is perpetually busy with worshippers and demonstrates the centrality of Orthodox observance to daily Tbilisi life.

Sighnaghi: The City of Love

Sighnaghi, perched on a hilltop above the Alazani Valley in the southeastern corner of Kakheti, is one of the most romantic and immediately charming small towns in Georgia. Its old town is enclosed by a remarkably complete circuit of eighteenth-century stone walls and towers — one of the best-preserved fortification systems of the period in the entire Caucasus — and the pink-hued walls, the terracotta-tiled roofs, and the sweeping views over the vineyard-covered plain to the Caucasus mountains beyond have earned it the nickname "the city of love." The view from the walls at sunset, with the Alazani Valley spread below and the snowcapped mountains glowing pink on the horizon, is one of the defining images of Georgian travel.

Sighnaghi has become something of a boutique wine tourism hub over the past decade, with numerous small hotels, wine bars, and restaurants occupying the beautifully restored old town buildings. The town's wedding registry office, famously open twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, has made it a popular destination for romantic getaways and elopements. The local artists' galleries, the small museum of Georgian traditional culture, and the numerous wine-tasting opportunities make a day in Sighnaghi pass very pleasantly indeed.

Beyond Sighnaghi, the Bodhi Monastery complex and the medieval Gremi fortress — the remains of the sixteenth-century capital of the Kakheti kingdom, with its tower-church and royal palace — are worth visiting on any circuit of the region. The Alazani River itself, gentle and willow-fringed, provides attractive picnic and riverside walking spots in the valley below the wine estates.

Mtskheta: UNESCO World Heritage and the Ancient Capital

Mtskheta, approximately thirty kilometers northwest of Tbilisi at the confluence of the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers, was the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Iberia for approximately a thousand years and remains the spiritual center of Georgian Orthodoxy to this day. It is a small town by modern standards — a population of only a few thousand permanent residents — but its historical importance and architectural wealth have led to its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site under the name Historical Monuments of Mtskheta.

The town's location at the confluence of two rivers was strategically significant in antiquity and gives it a geography of unusual beauty. The Mtkvari arrives from the west and the Aragvi from the north, meeting at a point that is dramatically overlooked by the Jvari Monastery on its clifftop above. Looking at this confluence from the heights of Jvari, you see what travelers and pilgrims have seen for fifteen centuries: the glittering rivers joining, the medieval town spread along the bank, the mountains rising to the north, and the plains of Kartli extending south toward Tbilisi.

Vardzia: The Cave City of the Caucasus

Vardzia, in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region of southern Georgia near the Turkish border, is one of the most extraordinary architectural achievements in the entire Caucasus. The cave monastery was created in the second half of the twelfth century under the patronage of King George III and his daughter Queen Tamar, cut directly into the volcanic rock face of Mount Erusheti above the Mtkvari River. At its height in the late twelfth century, Vardzia contained approximately three thousand cave rooms on thirteen levels — chambers, churches, wine cellars, storerooms, a library, a pharmacy, bathhouses, and living quarters for a monastic community of hundreds of monks. A sophisticated network of water pipes cut through the rock supplied fresh water from springs higher in the mountain, and the entire complex was invisible from the valley below, the cave openings concealed by a facing wall of rock.

The earthquake of 1283 destroyed approximately two-thirds of the original cave city, collapsing the outer face of the cliff and exposing the interior to view. What survived is astonishing enough: approximately six hundred rooms on eight levels, connected by stairs and corridors cut through the rock, opening onto the cliff face in a honeycomb of archways and doorways that extends for five hundred meters along the mountainside. The Church of the Dormition at the heart of the complex preserves the finest thirteenth-century fresco cycle in Georgia, including an extraordinary portrait of Queen Tamar herself — the only surviving contemporary likeness of the woman who presided over Georgia's Golden Age, painted during her lifetime or shortly after her death.

The setting of Vardzia is itself remarkable. The cave complex is cut into the north-facing cliff of a deep river gorge, with the Mtkvari flowing far below and the volcanic plateau of the Javakheti highlands rising behind. The approach road from Akhaltsikhe passes through a dramatic landscape of eroded volcanic rock formations, ancient ruined fortresses, and Turkish border villages, giving Vardzia a sense of remoteness and otherness that adds to the power of the site itself.

Vardzia is technically functional as a monastery: a small community of Georgian Orthodox monks continues to live in the accessible portions of the cave complex, maintaining liturgical life in the Church of the Dormition and preserving the site as a living place of worship rather than merely a museum. Services are held regularly, and visitors are welcome to attend, creating an encounter with medieval monastic life that is as authentic as anything in the region.

UNESCO World Heritage in Georgia

Georgia has four UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a number that will strike many travelers as surprisingly small given the density and quality of the country's historical monuments. The four sites are: the Historical Monuments of Mtskheta, inscribed in 1994; the Upper Svaneti region, inscribed in 1996; the Bagrati Cathedral in Kutaisi and the Gelati Monastery complex near Kutaisi, originally inscribed in 1994 and revised in 2017 following concerns about inappropriate restoration; and the Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands in western Georgia, inscribed in 2021 as the country's newest World Heritage property.

The Bagrati Cathedral and Gelati Monastery deserve particular mention as they have not been fully described elsewhere in this guide. Bagrati Cathedral in Kutaisi, begun under King Bagrat III at the time of Georgia's unification in the early eleventh century, was the most important royal church of the unified Georgian kingdom. Damaged by the Ottoman army in 1692, who detonated gunpowder in the building to destroy it, the cathedral stood as a majestic ruin until a controversial restoration was completed in 2012 that largely rebuilt the collapsed sections. The restoration was criticized by UNESCO for not adequately distinguishing new from original fabric, leading to the reconsideration of the site's World Heritage status, which was eventually reconfirmed under a revised management plan.

Gelati Monastery, approximately eleven kilometers east of Kutaisi, was founded by King David the Builder in 1106 as a center of religious and intellectual life. The academy at Gelati was one of the greatest centers of learning in the medieval Caucasus, attracting scholars, theologians, and philosophers, and its library preserved manuscripts of enormous historical importance. The monastery complex contains three churches, a bell tower, and an exceptionally well-preserved mosaic in the apse of the Cathedral of the Virgin — a twelfth-century Deesis composition that is among the finest surviving examples of Georgian medieval mosaic art. David the Builder himself is buried at the north gate of the monastery under a stone slab, in accordance with his wish that monks and visitors would walk over his grave as a demonstration of humility.

The Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2021, protects the ancient broadleaf forests of western Georgia — part of the Colchic floristic region, an Ice Age refugium where many plant species survived the last glaciation that were extirpated from the rest of Europe. The site encompasses the ancient Colchic evergreen forests of Adjara and the Imereti lowlands, with their remarkable assemblages of Colchic laurel, Colchic holly, Pontic rhododendron, and other endemic species, along with the wetlands of the Kolkheti National Park on the Black Sea coast.

Festivals and Seasonal Celebrations

Georgia's calendar of festivals and cultural celebrations adds another dimension to the experience of visiting at different times of year. The most important annual event in the Georgian wine calendar is Rtveli, the grape harvest in October, when the vineyards of Kakheti are alive with activity and family wineries invite guests to participate in the picking, treading, and initial pressing of grapes that marks the beginning of the new wine year. Participating in a Rtveli — which typically involves several hours of physical labor in the vineyard followed by a celebratory supra of heroic proportions — is one of the most immersive cultural experiences available to visitors anywhere in the Caucasus, and it happens once a year for only a brief period in late September and October.

Tbilisoba, the annual festival celebrating Tbilisi's founding and diversity, takes place in October in the old town and combines folk music, traditional dance, food and craft markets, and the characteristically Georgian energy of large numbers of people gathered together with wine and music. The festival spills across the old town streets and into the parks along the Mtkvari River, and it provides an excellent introduction to the range of Georgian regional cultures and artistic traditions.

The Georgian Orthodox Easter, Aghdgoma, is the most important religious celebration in the Georgian calendar and is observed with an intensity that reflects the depth of Orthodox practice in the country. The midnight service on Holy Saturday, with the passing of the flame from candle to candle as the Patriarch announces the Resurrection, and the subsequent eruption of fireworks and celebration across Tbilisi, is one of the most extraordinary religious spectacles in the Caucasus. Visitors to Tbilisi in the Easter period should be prepared for heightened crowds at churches, closure of many businesses on Easter Sunday, and the kind of collective emotional atmosphere that emerges from a genuinely faith-saturated culture observing its most sacred moment.

Mariamoba, the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, celebrated on August 28 in the Georgian Orthodox calendar, brings large numbers of pilgrims to the major Marian shrines across the country, particularly the Bodbi Monastery in Kakheti where the tomb of Saint Nino is located. The combination of religious pilgrimage, outdoor celebration, and the late-August landscape — with the Alazani Valley vineyards approaching harvest ripeness and the evenings beginning to cool — makes this an atmospheric time to be in eastern Georgia.

The annual New Wine Festival at Rike Park in Tbilisi in May celebrates the new vintage of amber wines, with dozens of natural wine producers from across Georgia presenting their work and the general public invited to taste, discuss, and purchase. The festival has grown into one of the most significant events on the international natural wine calendar and attracts wine professionals and enthusiasts from across Europe and beyond.