Famous Landmarks in Tbilisi
A fortress ridge, riverside cathedrals and a Moorish-revival theatre share one skyline.
Tbilisi's landmarks cluster along the Kura River gorge and the ridge above it. A walled fortress caps the hill over the old town, while two Georgian Orthodox churches face each other from cliffs on opposite banks, rebuilt repeatedly in stone and brick after centuries of invasion. Further out, a nineteenth-century avenue laid down under Russian rule carries an opera house dressed in horseshoe arches and striped Oriental-revival brickwork, its European hall hidden behind that exterior. The result is a compact stack of periods rather than a single style: early medieval church-building, a defensive stronghold, and imperial-era institutions built to make a provincial capital look metropolitan.
Narikala
400
Crenellated stone walls climb a bare, steep hillside in two linked sections, following the ridge line above the river; a small white church sits within the lower enclosure, and the old town's tiled roofs spread below.
A defensive stronghold on a steep hill above the river, built in two walled sections between the sulfur baths and the botanical garden below. Its lower court holds St Nicholas church, a 1996–1997 rebuild that replaces a thirteenth-century original destroyed by fire. The new church follows a prescribed-cross plan with doors on three sides, its interior frescoed with biblical scenes alongside episodes from Georgian history.
- The church inside the walls looks medieval but was entirely rebuilt in 1996–1997, replacing a thirteenth-century predecessor lost to fire.
- Its frescoes mix biblical scenes with episodes from Georgian history rather than religious imagery alone.
Photo: Diego Delso (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Metekhi Church
1278–1289
A compact stone church with a conical-domed drum stands right at the edge of a cliff over the river, facing the old town's rooftops across the water.
A Georgian Orthodox church set on a cliff above the river, facing the old town across the water. Most of the structure standing today was built between 1278 and 1289 under King Demetrius II, though oral tradition places the site's origins as far back as the fifth century. It remains one of the city's principal riverside churches and a fixture of the view over the old quarter.
- Oral tradition traces the site back to the fifth century, nearly eight hundred years before the standing church was actually built.
Photo: Alexxx1979 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sioni Cathedral
13th century
A tiered, drum-domed stone cathedral rises directly from a narrow old-town street beside the river, its cross-shaped plan and pale masonry the product of several rebuildings rather than one campaign.
An Orthodox cathedral first built in the sixth and seventh centuries on a street facing the river, and destroyed and reconstructed several times since by foreign invaders. The structure standing today is based on a thirteenth-century rebuilding, with further modifications made between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. It served as the seat of the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia until that role passed to the Holy Trinity Cathedral in 2004.
- It follows a medieval Georgian custom of naming churches after places in the Holy Land, taking its name from Mount Zion in Jerusalem.
- It served as the country's senior cathedral until 2004, when that role moved to a newly consecrated church.
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Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre
1896 · Victor Schröter
Horseshoe arches, striped brick and Oriental-revival ornament wrap a theatre building whose plan and grand hall inside are otherwise a standard European opera house.
An opera house built in 1896 to a neo-Moorish design by the Baltic German architect Victor Schröter, though the institution it houses had already been founded in 1851, making it one of the oldest opera companies in Eastern Europe. Fires have damaged the building repeatedly since, and it has undergone several rehabilitations under Soviet and Georgian governments, most recently a six-year restoration completed in January 2016.
- Its Oriental exterior encloses a conventional European opera house layout inside.
- The 1851 opera company predates the 1896 building it now occupies by 45 years.
- The most recent restoration took six years and cost about 40 million US dollars, funded by a Georgian business foundation.
Photo: Francisco Anzola (CC BY 2.0)
History
Tbilisi was founded in the fifth century by Vakhtang I of Iberia, and its oldest surviving fabric reflects that long span: a hilltop stronghold and cliffside churches went up, burned, and were rebuilt across the medieval centuries as Georgian kingdoms and outside powers fought over the crossing between Europe and Asia. Annexation by the Russian Empire in 1801 brought a different kind of building: the city became seat of the Caucasus Viceroyalty, and Rustaveli Avenue filled with theatres and institutions in imported European and Oriental-revival styles. Later Soviet and post-Soviet construction added further layers, leaving a skyline the Wikipedia extract itself describes as a mix of medieval, neoclassical, Beaux Arts, Art Nouveau, Stalinist and modern structures.