Guests who ask for “the old town” of Tbilisi get pointed in three different directions by three different concierges. Some send them to Freedom Square. Some to the sulfur baths. Some to Meidan. All three are right, in the sense that the medieval city stretched across all of them. None is the answer that produces a good one-hour walk.
The answer that produces the walk is one old line of streets: Ioane Shavteli, Erekle II and Sioni, from Anchiskhati Basilica to Sioni Cathedral. Walking it slowly is the version of the old town that earns the time. The map versions of the old town include too much and lose the spine.
The map versus the city
Tourist maps tend to draw the old town as a triangle: Freedom Square at the top, the Mtkvari river on the east, the Narikala fortress on the south. Inside the triangle are old residential streets, two cathedrals, the sulfur baths, Meidan square and the fortress walls above. Walking all of it is not a coherent experience.
The city itself works differently. Medieval Tbilisi had a spine, and it is still there: Ioane Shavteli, Erekle II and Sioni streets, the axis along which the most important churches, public buildings and houses of the old city stood. It runs along the river side of the old town, and Sioni Street runs on to Kote Afkhazi Street, which ends at Meidan, Vakhtang Gorgasali Square. Walking the spine is the trip; the rest of the triangle is what you see from it, not what you walk.
A guest with one hour walks the line, from Anchiskhati past Sioni Cathedral and down to Meidan. A guest with two hours adds the bath district and the ride up to Narikala. We rarely recommend more than three hours unless the guest is photographing; a half-day is better spent on Mtskheta, and a full one on a day trip out of Tbilisi.
Along the spine
Seven stops on or just off the line earn a pause, from north to south.
Anchiskhati Basilica at the northern end, on Ioane Shavteli Street. The oldest surviving church in Tbilisi, 6th-century in origin, with a separate brick belltower built in 1675. It takes its name from an icon of the Saviour brought that year from the Ancha monastery in Klarjeti; the icon itself is now in the Art Museum of Georgia.
Erekle II Square. Between the two churches. King Rostom built a palace here in 1638, and it was destroyed when Agha Mohammad Khan sacked Tbilisi in 1795, as the square’s Georgian Wikipedia entry records.
The balconies of Erekle II Street. No. 11 was built in 1896 by the architect Alexander Ozerov for David Sarajishvili, with a carved wooden balcony across the middle of its second floor; No. 21 has an openwork iron balcony. Photograph them in the morning or late afternoon, when the light is lower; midday flattens them.
Sioni Cathedral on Sioni Street, its east front facing the river. First built in the 6th and 7th centuries and rebuilt many times since, the present building follows a 13th-century rebuilding with changes made between the 17th and 19th centuries. To the left of the altar is the venerated Grapevine Cross that tradition says was made by Saint Nino, who brought Christianity to Georgia in the 4th century. Ten minutes inside is enough; resist the urge to over-explain.
The Tbilisi History Museum, also on Sioni Street, in the 19th-century Artsruni caravanserai, a former trading house.
The Great Synagogue, just off the line at 45–47 Kote Afkhazi Street. Built between 1904 and 1911, it is the largest synagogue in the country and the working centre of Tbilisi’s Jewish community, present in Georgia for over 2,000 years. Check service times before going in.
St George’s Armenian Cathedral at the south-western corner of Meidan. Founded in 1251 by its inscription, restored in the 17th century, in 1832 and 1881, and again between 2012 and 2015, it is the cathedral of the Armenian Apostolic Church’s diocese in Georgia.
Meidan and the sulfur baths
Below the spine is Abanotubani, the bath district. The baths have their own piece, Tbilisi’s sulfur baths: bathhouses, rooms and prices. For the purpose of an old-town walk, Abanotubani is the descent guests take after the spine.
The route down: from Sioni Cathedral, follow Sioni Street to Kote Afkhazi and down to Meidan, which Georgia’s tourism administration describes as the city’s main bazaar since time immemorial; today’s Meidan Bazaar is a shopping arcade under the square. From there the brick domes of the bathhouses are immediately visible. Allow longer if the bath itself is on the day’s plan.
Sioni vs Anchiskhati
The two churches at the ends of the walk are different experiences, and the difference shows only once you have seen both.
Sioni is the larger and the more central. It was the seat of the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia until the Holy Trinity Cathedral was consecrated in 2004, and the Grapevine Cross is its draw. It is the busier of the two.
Anchiskhati is smaller, older and less obvious: the oldest surviving church in the city, founded in the 6th century and named for the icon brought from Ancha. It is the church to visit if a guest cares about the early period more than the institution.
If a guest can only do one, Sioni earns the slot. If they can do both, start at Anchiskhati: the older church sets up the larger one.
Narikala and walking back
The Narikala fortress on the hill above the old town is reached two ways: by the cable car from Rike Park across the river, or on foot by a path that is steep in places. The funicular is often mentioned in the same breath, but it climbs Mtatsminda, from Chonkadze Street, not Narikala.
We recommend the cable car for guests on a short walk who want to add the fortress view. For guests with two hours, riding up and walking down from the fortress through the old town inverts the direction and works as well.
The lunch problem
The old town has a lunch problem worth being honest about. Kote Afkhazi is lined with places set up for the passing walk; for a proper sit-down lunch, step off it and book ahead.
The quickest Georgian lunch needs no table: shoti, the long crescent-shaped bread baked on the inside wall of a tone, a terracotta oven dug into the ground. For a guest who wants it hot from the oven, ask for a tone bakery near the walk.
We do not recommend any of the cafes with English-only menus on the Kote Afkhazi stretch itself.
The booking note
The old-town walk is not a tour we sell: SOIT is not a tour company and provides no guides. What we provide is the car around it. Booked by the hour, at 200 ₾ in the S-Class or the V-Class or 300 ₾ in either Maybach with a three-hour minimum, the car drops the guest at the start of the walk and collects them at Meidan or at the cable car station in Rike Park, depending on the route. On a day booked at the day rate, or a multi-day booking, the walk fits inside the day.
Most of the central hotels (see arriving at Tbilisi’s hotels by car) are a short drive from the start of this walk. Put the hour on the booking brief with the start time and whether the cable car and Narikala extension is wanted, then email booking@soitblack.com or send it through here.