Tbilisi is a city of juxtapositions. Look up from a higgledy piggledy street lined with colourful painted houses and you might see austere Soviet high-rise apartment blocks, or the hazy Caucasus mountains, as still and serene as a painted backdrop.
As digital nomads and the small plates crowd have been carried on the winds of gentrification to Berlin, Marseille and Lisbon, there is a gap in the market for a city that sits in that elusive Venn diagram crossover of cool, cheap and a little bit gritty. Tbilisi is all three in spades.
Georgia’s capital used to be an 8-hour slog via Istanbul to get to. This was irritating for early adopters, but meant that the city’s authenticity was preserved. The bars are in genuinely crumbling buildings with peeling plaster walls, an aesthetic that many establishments west of the Bosphorus will pay through the nose to achieve.
In 2025, British Airways started a direct route from Heathrow to Tbilisi, meaning you can reach the Caucasus in a cool five hours. Now is the time to go, before the Instagram crowd roll in, clamouring for overpriced pastries. Here is how to spend 48 hours in Tbilisi.
If you arrive via night flight, you’ll touch down bleary-eyed at around 5am. Make sure you negotiate an early check-in in advance, and retreat to your bedroom immediately for a nap.
Once you’ve shaken off the plane, head to Old Tbilisi for lunch. Georgian restaurants are popping up all over London and New York, and for good reason. The country’s cuisine is defined by herby, nutty sauces, hearty dumplings and rich meat stews. The Georgians excel in comfort food, from the famous khachapuri, (a canoe of bread filled with cheese and topped with a fried egg), to the portly, twisted khinkali dumplings.
Down a picturesque cobbled side street is Kneina, a family-run restaurant that serves traditional Georgian fare (castle.ge/kneinarestaurant). The interiors are filled with knick knacks and mismatched wooden furniture, while paintings and family photographs cluster the walls. Sit outside in the sun and enjoy mezze, Georgian style. The must-orders include phkali – little herby golf balls made with beetroot or spinach and studded with pomegranate seeds; aubergine rolls stuffed with walnut paste; gebjalia – cheese rolls bathing in tart yoghurt and topped with sour cherries, and a moreish tomato and cucumber salad in a sunflower seed dressing. I washed this down with Kneina’s homemade lemonade, while a placid neighbourhood cat sat curled up at my feet.
After lunch, take a stroll around the Old Town. This historic part of the city is full of precipitous cobbled streets and patchwork houses with traditional wooden balconies. Stop in at the Meidan Bazar, a bustling market in an underground tunnel where local crafts, spices and antiques are sold. Walk or take a funicular up to the Mother of Georgia monument, a towering 20 metre aluminium statue of the country’s protectress, who holds a bottle of wine in one hand and a sword in the other. From there, soak up the sweeping views of the city before heading into the sprawling botanical gardens next door. Locals come here with picnics or to read a book in a quiet clearing: there are dozens of pathways and the air is redolent with lilac and roses, and soundtracked by birdsong and ribbeting frogs. Follow a stream past the bamboo path, which will bring you to a glass fronted lair atop a hill that would look more at home in an Austin Powers movie than a botanical garden. This is the supervillain-style residence of the country’s de facto leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili.
Back in Old Town, make your way to Abanotubani, the historic bath district. Here, there are dozens of bath houses within ancient red bricked domes which offer massages, scrubs, and hot and cold plunges. Some are communal, others are divided by gender, or you can book a private room.
As well as historic riches, there’s often dynamic cultural events going on. I was in Tbilisi during the ZEG Storytelling Festival (zegfest.com), an annual event in June with a richly varied programme of music, panel discussions and workshops. During my visit, I went to sessions with The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci and Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, and caught a live set by Kordz, one of Tbilisi’s most exciting music producers.
For dinner, cross the Kura River to Unfound Door, an achingly chic restaurant complete with distressed plaster walls, a climbing monstera plant and parquet floors, whose dishes are the lovechild of Georgian and modern European cooking (unfounddoor.ge). I’m still thinking about their deconstructed vitello tonnato, featuring tender sliced beef, soft cheese and delicious wild native greens called jonjoli. We also had Svanetian cornbread with delicate wafers of pear, and beef kuchmachi, as well as some intriguing cocktails from a secret menu.
Tbilisi is surrounded by dramatically beautiful natural scenery that is easily reachable by car. The next day, rise early and get on the road to Mtskheta, an ancient city 20 kilometres north of Tbilisi and a UNESCO world heritage site. I went with a lovely tour guide, who was provided to me by Georgia’s travel bureau (georgia.travel). On the way, stop off at Jvari Monastery, a 6th century Orthodox church atop a hill, whose interiors lit only by the amber glow of beeswax candles. On the winding path up to the monastery, yellow and purple wildflowers grow in the grass and there’s a little wooden shack selling honey. From this vantage point, you can see where the lighter waters of the Aragvi river, which flows down from the Caucasus mountains, meets the deep turquoise of the Kura river that runs through the capital.
Mtskheta was the capital of the early Georgian kingdom, and was built on the confluence of the two rivers. At its centre is the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, where according to Orthodox tradition, the robe of Jesus is buried (though several others make the same claim). After wandering through the church and its grounds, make your way to a nearby restaurant called Georgian Picnic for lunch (georgianpicnic.ge). My tour guide and I sat at a table in the shade of greenery on the balcony, whose postcard view of the Jvari monastery was only slightly impeded by Mtskheta’s incongruously modern police station. We ate delicious pork cooked over coals, lobiani, and a tangy green salad made with apple, cabbage and cucumber.
In the late afternoon we took a funicular from town up to Mtatsminda Theme Park, which is perched high up on a hill overlooking Tbilisi. There’s lots of winding paths through lush greenery, and funny little themed buildings (like Tutankhamun’s labyrinth) that make you feel like you’re on a film set. After going on a few janky rides, we watched the sun set over the city, before retreating to a restaurant in the Funicular building called Chela (funicular.ge). It may not sound appealing to have dinner in a theme park, but this is a beautiful, romantic restaurant set within a Neoclassical wedding cake of a building.
On the terrace, the city’s lights flickered on as the sky turned from amber to deep blue. We drank an excellent orange wine made the traditional Georgian way – fermented underground in large earthenware pots, or kvevri, and ate chilled sorrel soup, ajapsandali, which is like ratatouille, and braised chicken in a rich mushroom sauce.
After dinner, head to the wine bar Kancelleria for a nightcap, before falling into bed.
Where to Stay
The best, most interesting hotel in Tbilisi is Stamba, on Rustaveli Avenue. Set in a former Soviet-era publishing house, the hotel’s design mirrors the city: the bones of the building are industrial chic – all exposed concrete and brickwork – but then it is filled with plants, rich colours and carefully curated furniture. I stayed in an Aviator Signature room which had lofty ceilings, huge windows looking out onto the verdant courtyard, a glimmering freestanding brass bathtub, and floor to ceiling shelves stacked with books. The hotel’s philosophy of sustainability and hyperlocality bleeds into several side projects. Downstairs, there is an in-house brewery, a perfectly Wes Anderson-esque chocolate factory, and a vertical farm where microgreens and edible flowers for the restaurant are grown, while organic produce from the hotel’s regenerative farm south-east of Tbilisi is sold round the corner in the Udabno Shop. Everything about Stamba is achingly cool, beautifully done and will have you scribbling notes and taking pictures. Rooms from £162 per night, stambahotel.com
For those on a tighter budget, Stamba’s little sister, Rooms, is in an adjoining building. The hotel is on a smaller and more intimate scale, but still with that distinctive flair for design. And where Rooms beats Stamba is with its buffet breakfast. Indeed, the word buffet is not nearly chic enough to describe what awaits you each morning. I will, until my dying day, be pining for their homemade granola – huge clusters that pair so well with matsoni, a type of fermented Georgian yoghurt. Rooms from £110 per night, roomshotels.com
For those visiting in the summer months who want a body of water to cool off in, go for the Radisson Blu Iveria down the road. There is an excellent outdoor pool, and a rooftop one too. Rooms from £115 per night, radissonhotels.com
Direct flights from London Heathrow to Tbilisi can be booked through British Airways, britishairways.com
