Kutaisi
The history museum has superb collections from all around western Georgia, but a guided tour is a good idea as labelling is poor. The highlight is the…
Kutaisi
The history museum has superb collections from all around western Georgia, but a guided tour is a good idea as labelling is poor. The highlight is the…
Tbilisi
It’s easy to wander for a couple of hours in these tree-filled and waterfall-dotted gardens, which stretch more than a kilometre up the valley behind the…
Kakheti
This interesting smallish winery produces wines of numerous appellations under the Shumi and Iberiuli labels, and has a vineyard of 432 vine varieties,…
Kakheti
A few kilometres outside Dedoplis Tskaro, Eagles Canyon is home to enormous griffon, black vultures and black storks. It's an epic place best explored…
Georgia
Strung with pretty parks, part-derelict jetties, cafes and kitschy souvenir stalls, and fronted by stretches of stony beach, flowers and tall trees,…
Georgia
This abandoned building was once a Palace of Culture in the Soviet era and has some rather impressive interiors that anyone can wander in and explore…
Batumi
The 7m-high, ethereally moving, metal sculpture Woman and Man, by Tamar Kvesitadze, is universally known as Ali & Nino after the protagonists of Kurban…
Kakheti
The Vashlovani Protected Areas total 370 sq km of territory harbouring a very high concentration of different species including 46 mammals, 135 birds, 30…
Georgia
This now-abandoned but elaborately decorated neoclassical train station on the main coastal road through town has some absolutely wonderful Stalinist bas…
Batumi
This 2.6km-long cable car carries you up to a shopping-cafe-restaurant complex on Anuria Hill, 2586m above Batumi, for panoramic views over the city. It's…
Concert Hall & Exhibition Centre
Tbilisi
The two large tubular metallic structures at the north end of Rike Park were commissioned from Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas during the…
Western Georgia
You'll need to use your imagination to get much out of this ancient city site, which was one of the main centres of Colchis, flourishing from the 8th to…
Kakheti
Nekresi’s early Georgian architecture and the views across the Alazani valley from its hillside-woodland site are marvellous. The monastery is 4km off the…
Western Georgia
The star features of the 3.3-sq-km reserve, 9km northwest of Kutaisi, are a couple of dozen 120-million-year-old, fossilised dinosaur footprints (well…
Western Georgia
Little Motsameta sits on a spectacular clifftop promontory above a bend of the Tskhaltsitela River, 5km from Kutaisi, 1.8km off the Gelati road. The river…
Kakheti
This monastery, beautifully situated in a cypress grove, was one of two famous medieval Georgian Neoplatonist academies, the other being Gelati near…
Sighnaghi
Bodbe Convent, the revered final resting place of St Nino, is set among tall cypresses 2km south of Sighnaghi, a pleasant walk on country roads. The…
Kakheti
From 1466 to 1672, Gremi was the capital of Kakheti, but the town down to the west of the citadel was totally devastated by Shah Abbas in 1616. Within the…
Western Georgia
This 1.4km-long cave at Kumistavi, 20km northwest of Kutaisi, is a succession of six large chambers followed by a 400m-long underground lake. Sections are…
Tbilisi
The first church on this site is supposed to have been built in the 6th century by Davit Gareja, one of the ascetic ‘Syrian fathers’ who returned from the…
Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Art
Tbilisi
This museum contains a vast wealth of icons, crosses and jewellery from all over Georgia. Sadly, it can only be entered with a guide (English available,…
Batumi
Batumi’s only surviving mosque, built in the 1860s, is finely painted in pinks, greens and blues, with Quranic calligraphy on the walls – but is no longer…
Western Georgia
The picturesque, remote mountain lakes of Toba-Varchkhili, at around 2650m altitude, are best visited on a camping trip, as they’re reached by a 33km jeep…
Tbilisi
This green expanse along the eastern riverbank, with its winding paths, pools and fountains, is joined to the west side of the Mtkvari by the Bridge of…
Western Georgia
Not to be confused with the more-famous Dadiani Palace in Zugdidi, the former summer palace of the Dadianis (and now occasional residence of the Patriarch…
Residence of Bidzina Ivanishvili
Tbilisi
The monstrous residence of Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia's richest man, former prime minister and éminence grise on the political scene, looms over the…
Georgia
Sitting proudly overlooking the sea and within earshot of the bells of Novy Afon Cathedral, this dacha (country cottage) regularly hosted Joseph Stalin…
Kutaisi
The ruined palace-citadel immediately east of the Bagrati Cathedral dates back to the 6th century. It was ruined in 1769 by bombardment from the forces of…
Western Georgia
Martvili's monastery, a medieval Georgian cultural centre, sits on a serene hilltop overlooking the town and the surrounding valleys and hills. Its church…
Tbilisi
Georgia’s presidential palace, which is not open to visitors, was a Saakashvili-era prestige project that opened in 2009. Its ultraclassical portico is…
Armenian Cathedral of St George
Tbilisi
This large cathedral just above Meidan was founded in 1251, though the current structure dates mainly from the 18th century. Its interior has colourful…
Batumi
Towering over Evropas moedani is this striking portrayal of Medea, the local princess who would help her future husband Jason obtain the Golden Fleece. A…
Kakheti
What's special here is the 7.7km of wine tunnels, dug out of a hillside in the early 1960s for storing and ageing wine at constant temperatures. Today the…
Great Caucasus
The small village of Juta (2150m), an outpost of the Khevsur people from over the mountains to the east, is about 15km along the mostly unpaved Sno Valley…
Tbilisi
The eclectic exhibits here, housed in an old caravanserai, range from models and photos to high-society and folk costumes from the 19th century, and…
Georgia
At the north end of Primorsky Park in Staraya Gagra, the surviving walls of the 4th-to-5th-century AD Abaata fortress enclose some of Russian Prince…
Tbilisi
The Bridge of Peace, a rather incongruously modern glass-and-steel footbridge over the Mtkvari with a totally unnecessary roof, was designed by Italian…
Tbilisi
On the short walk up to the Botanical Gardens you pass the only mosque in Tbilisi that survived Lavrenty Beria’s purges of the 1930s. It's a red-brick…
Kakheti
This impressive hilltop ruin is an extraordinary site to behold and it's hard to imagine how it was even constructed atop such a steep peak. The truly…
Tbilisi
Nicknamed the Umbrellas, this building by Italian Massimiliano Fuksas is the biggest of a dozen Public Service Halls opened in new, contemporary buildings…