What to Do in Georgia

The Old Town (Kala district) is where Tbilisi does its best work. Cobblestone streets climb the hills in no particular order, wooden balconies with ornate carved lattice hang out over the lanes, and medieval churches sit on cliffsides that make you wonder how they got them there. The Abanotubani sulfur bath district sits at the base of the cliffs, its brick domes venting steam over the neighborhood. Book a private room at one of the bathhouses and spend an hour in naturally heated, sulfuric spring water in a tiled stone room. It smells exactly like sulfur. Do it anyway. The crooked clock tower of the Rezo Gabriadze Puppet Theater is in this neighborhood too: a deliberately tilted brick tower with a golden angel that appears on the hour and strikes a bell. The Dry Bridge flea market on weekends sells Soviet memorabilia, old cameras, and handmade work. The whole area rewards wandering without a plan. Get lost in it for at least half a day.

Narikala is the medieval fortress above Tbilisi's Old Town, dating back to the 4th century, with walls that are still standing in large sections along the ridge. The fortress itself is a ruin, which is fine, because what you actually come for is the view. The cable car from Rike Park (the park at the base of the cliff, near the Bridge of Peace) takes you up to the fortress level in a few minutes. From there the whole city spreads below: the Mtkvari river curving through the valley, the glass arc of the Bridge of Peace, the Old Town rooftops, Mtatsminda mountain to the west with its Soviet TV tower, and on clear days the snow-capped Caucasus in the distance. Come at sunset. The city turns gold and then orange and then the lights start coming on across the valley. It is one of the better views in the Caucasus, and the cable car makes it almost too easy.

Uplistsikhe is a rock-hewn city carved directly into a sandstone cliff above the Mtkvari river, about 80 kilometers west of Tbilisi. The place dates back to the early Iron Age, around 1000 BC, and was a major urban center as late as the 13th century. That means an entire city in the rock: streets, multi-room dwellings, a colonnaded hall used as a theater, granaries with carved ceilings, storage rooms, and a church built on top when Christianity arrived. You walk through it on paths cut into the sandstone, ducking into rooms that have been empty for 700 years, looking out through carved windows at the wide river valley below. The underground stairway carved through the interior of the cliff is the detail that gets most people: a passage from one level of the city to another, lit now with warm light, the walls smooth from millennia of use. You emerge on the upper level near the church. In spring, almond trees on the hillside below bloom white against the cliff. The whole scene at that time of year is almost unfairly beautiful.

David Gareja is a monastery complex carved into a semi-desert cliff in southeastern Georgia, near the Azerbaijan border. Monks have been there since the 6th century. The cave cells run up the cliff face in rows like a vertical village, and inside some of them you can still see 9th and 10th century frescoes on the walls. The landscape around the complex is a color palette you would not believe without seeing it: burnt orange and ochre hills, a vast arid plateau stretching out below, and a sky that looks too saturated to be real. The contrast between this landscape and the green mountains of western Georgia is one of the more striking things about the country. Getting there takes effort. It is about two and a half hours from Tbilisi by car, and the last stretch of road is rough. The site sits near the Azerbaijan border, so you stay on the Georgian side of the ridge, but the views from the top down into the Gareja semi-desert are a bonus. Go in the morning before the heat builds. Combine it with a stop at the painted hills viewpoint on the way.

Kartlis Deda, the Mother of Georgia, is a 20-meter aluminum statue of a woman in traditional Georgian dress standing on the edge of Sololaki hill above the Old Town. She was put up in 1958 for Tbilisi's 1,500th birthday and has watched the city from the same spot ever since. In one hand she holds a bowl of wine, in the other a sword. The symbolism is simple and very Georgian: wine for those who come as friends, a sword for those who come as enemies. Pragmatic, welcoming, and slightly threatening all at once, which turns out to be a reasonable summary of the national character after a few days in the country. The statue sits on the same ridge as Narikala Fortress, a short walk along the path between the two, with the whole of Tbilisi rolling out below. Come up here with the fortress and the cable car as part of a single loop and you cover most of the Old Town's best elevated viewpoints in one go.

Martvili Canyon is about 40 minutes from Kutaisi and the single best natural attraction in western Georgia. The Abasha river has carved a gorge through the limestone, and the water is a turquoise that looks edited in photos and is even more vivid in person. A trail runs along the top of the canyon with wooden bridges across the gorge, viewpoints over the water, and waterfalls coming in from the sides. You can also take a short motorized boat ride through the narrowest section of the gorge, between tall mossy walls with the water close below. It takes about 15 minutes and is one of those things that sounds touristy and turns out to be genuinely good. The canyon takes two to three hours at a relaxed pace including the boat section. The waterfalls at the entry point are worth stopping for even before you enter the gorge proper.

Prometheus Cave is 15 kilometers from Kutaisi and one of the larger show caves in the Caucasus. A guided tour takes you through a series of chambers with stalactites, stalagmites, underground rivers, and crystalline formations that have been building up for hundreds of thousands of years. The tour ends with a boat ride through a flooded cavern, lit with colored lights reflecting off the water above and below. If you are generally skeptical about tourist caves, this one is worth setting that aside for. The scale is real, the formations are genuinely dense, and the boat section is the kind of thing you describe badly to people afterward because words do not quite capture the combination of silence, water, and light. The whole tour takes about an hour.

The Chronicle of Georgia is a monumental sculpture complex on the shore of the Tbilisi Sea reservoir, about 15 kilometers from the city center. Sixteen massive stone pillars, each around 35 meters tall, carved with reliefs depicting Georgian kings, saints, and historical events, arranged in two rows facing each other. The project was started in 1985 by Georgian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli and was never fully completed, which somehow adds to its character. It is enormous, slightly eccentric, and completely unlike anything else you will encounter on the trip. Standing between the pillars and looking up, you get a proper sense of the scale. From a distance, the complex looks like a stone Stonehenge built by someone who had never seen Stonehenge and had significantly more budget. It pairs well with a drive around the reservoir or a stop at the nearby beach in summer.