I magine arriving in a new country … and you are met by a surprise limo, which takes you to the Prime Minister’s residence, for a meal?! No, it’s not a joke. This really happened to Dutch tourist Jesper Black, who happened to be Georgia’s (the country, not the State in the US) six millionth visitor in 2016. The Georgians even voted online to decide what should be served to him for Black’s first meal in Georgia. The video of Black being whisked away from the airport in Tbilisi, the capital city, with a police motorcade, to a private dinner with Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili is available online. He had dinner with the PM, drinking glasses of fine Georgian wine and enjoying traditional dance performances, before a week-long trip around the country led by Georgia Tourism.
Georgia’s tourism is on the rise. This country, wedged between Turkey and the Black Sea, was once called the ‘bread basket of the Soviet Union’. It has emerged from the Soviet era, blossoming into a tourist destination with a heady mix of history and stellar cuisine.
An ancient city
Tbilisi was named after its hot sulphur springs, where, legend goes, a king established the city after being impressed by the springs. Even today, the city has a spa culture with many brick-domed sulphur baths, some built in Persian style with colorful glazed facades, especially the Orbeliani Bathhouse. The 17th-century building looks more like a mosque. Old Tbilisi, along the River Mtkvari, has winding streets lined with homes with latticed wooden balconies, a mosque, synagogue, and Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches within a few steps of each other. Pomegranate, mulberry and fig trees grow in community yards, shared property of homeowners there.
The delicately carved and filigreed over-hanging wooden, and wrought-iron ‘Tbilisi balconies’ are the hallmarks of the city. These balconies were constructed to offer a respite to the citizens from the summer heat. “The balconies were where people gathered and socialised, and took their meals. On warm summer nights they even slept in the balconies,” says David Sujashvili, my guide. Some balconies have been glassed in and are called ‘Shushabandhi’.
At first glance the city looks chaotic, with construction sites and dilapidated buildings. The Sololaki District was once called the little Paris of the city with tree-lined cobbled backstreets, its streets in a grid pattern filled with old art nouveau mansions, wrought-iron balconies and crumbling facades. Here, we have dinner at Café Littera, housed in an old art deco mansion from 1903 and owned by the Georgian Writers’ Union. New York returned chef Tekuna Gachechiladze has started her restaurant that serves modern Georgian food, made with local produce, creating twists on traditional Georgian dishes.
The city’s structures
To an architecture buff like me, the city is a heaven of buildings. Tbilisi feels surprisingly European in spite of its rich Caucasian heritage. I trawl Rustaveli Avenue, which is the Champs Élysées of Tbilisi — with stately neoclassical palaces and buildings lining it, from the opera house to the former Parliament building. The opera house is a striking building built in a Moorish aesthetic, horseshoe arches and oriental carvings. My favourite church in town is the Sioni Cathedral named after Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The original structure was destroyed by the Persians, and David the Builder constructed the current church in the early 12th century. I am stunned by the beautiful interiors with frescoes and Russian iconography, candles illuminating the dark corners and highlighting the detailing in the frescoes. The church holds a grapevine cross, a symbol of Saint Nino, who converted the Georgian King Vakhtang III to Christianity.
Walking around town, I come across a statue at almost every corner that honours its famous and ordinary citizens alike. The sculpture of a man holding a horn in Tbilisi is modelled on an ancient statuette called the ‘Tamada’ — the master of ceremonies or the toastmaster at a Georgian feast. I see the statue of a lamplighter by sculptor Irakli Tsuladze on Baratashvili Street. “In ancient times, the city actually had to have these lights lit in the evenings,” says David. I pause for a photograph. I love the Berikaoba statue that depicts Georgian folk theatre which was performed on the pagan holiday of abundance. You have to love a city that honours its bakers and postmen with statues.
Shopping with locals
There is change and renewal in the air as construction is going on at several places. Many dilapidated buildings have been given a fresh lease of life. One case in point is Fabrika, Soviet-era sewing factory that has been converted into a 400-room hostel with art and craft shops, as well as a café. The Rooms is an erstwhile Soviet publishing house repurposed as a boutique hotel. Georgian fashion is also thriving, with swish boutiques and concept stores filling urban spaces and even its own Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. “There is a lot of homegrown talent but they need visibility, says David.
If you want to get under the skin of a city, head to its central market. Here, it’s called the Deserters Market since the 1920s, when deserters from the army, sold their weapons here. I walk through fruit stalls laden with watermelons, apricots, figs and fat plums. Stalls sell fresh and green herbs from parsley to tarragon, large blocks of Sulguni cheese and creamy matzuni yoghurt. I see people pick up marigold petals, which is used as a spice, and jars of pickle and jams. From there I head to Meidan Baazar, one of the oldest shopping spaces in the city, which exists since the fifth century, when the city was on the Silk Road. Today this cavernous underground space is a market that sells all things Georgian from the local tipple chacha in colourful clay containers, to local tea and Georgian wine, posters, cheese and jewellery.
On my last day in the Tbilisi, I take a cable car that climbs to the top of the hill where the Narikala Fortress was first built in the fourth century. From the peak, I get a view of Kartlis Deda (Mother Georgia) monument, erected in 1958 to mark the city’s 1,500th anniversary, and a great panoramic sweep of the city from its wooden balconied houses to steeples and spires, its brick-domed bathhouses and the mountains in the distance. It really looks every bit the ‘The fabulous land’, which is how Alexander Pushkin described Tbilisi.
Kalpana Sunder is a Chennai-based writer