Georgia: Ten Attractions and Natural Wonders

Where Europe and Asia overlap

Georgia sits on the southern side of the Caucasus mountains, between the Black Sea and Azerbaijan, with Russia to the north and Armenia and Turkey to the south. It is a small country — under four million people — with its own alphabet, one of the world's oldest Christian churches (state religion from around AD 337), and a claim to the oldest winemaking on earth, in clay qvevri buried in the ground. The landscape swings from semi-desert to glaciated 5,000-metre peaks to palm-lined seafront in the space of a few hours' drive.

The ten below run from the capital out to the mountains, the cave country of the south, the wine region, and the coast. Late spring and autumn are ideal; mountain roads to Svaneti and Kazbegi are best from June to October, and the Black Sea coast is a summer destination.

1. Tbilisi

Tbilisi, founded in the 5th century around its hot springs, is a layered capital of carved wooden balconies, Persian-style bathhouses in the Abanotubani quarter, Art Nouveau facades, Soviet blocks, and bold new glass architecture. The old town climbs to the Narikala fortress and the giant Kartlis Deda ("Mother of Georgia") statue; below run the lively Rustaveli avenue, the Dry Bridge, and a wine-bar and restaurant scene that has made the city a magnet for travellers.

Two or three days is enough for the centre, with the cable car, the botanical garden, and day trips to Mtskheta.

2. Mtskheta and Jvari

Mtskheta, 20 kilometres north of Tbilisi, was the capital of the kingdom of Iberia from the 3rd century BC to the 5th century AD and remains the spiritual centre of the church. Its 11th-century Svetitskhoveli cathedral, said to hold Christ's robe, dominates the small town; on the ridge across the water stands the perfectly proportioned Jvari church, built around 590–605. Together they form the Historical Monuments of Mtskheta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994.

It is an easy half-day trip and the usual first taste of Georgian church architecture.

3. Kazbegi and the Gergeti Trinity Church

Stepantsminda (Kazbegi), on the Georgian Military Road north of Tbilisi, sits under the 5,047-metre cone of Mount Kazbek. Above the town, a medieval church stands alone at 2,170 metres on a grassy shoulder with the glaciers of Kazbek behind it — the classic image of Georgia, reached on foot or by 4x4. The drive up, over the 2,379-metre Jvari Pass, is spectacular in itself.

It is doable as a long day trip, but an overnight stay allows a view in clear morning light.

4. Svaneti and Ushguli

Svaneti, a remote mountain province in the northwest, is famous for its koshki — tall stone defensive towers, most built between the 9th and 12th centuries, that let families hold out against raiders and blood feuds. The hub is Mestia, with its museum; a rough road continues to Ushguli, a group of tower villages at 2,100 metres below Mount Shkhara; Mestia, Ushguli and the surrounding area form the Upper Svaneti UNESCO World Heritage Site (1996). The hiking, especially the multi-day Mestia–Ushguli trek, is superb.

Access is by a mountain road or by air to Mestia.

5. Vardzia

In the far south, the cave city of Vardzia was hollowed out of a cliff above the Kura from the reign of Giorgi III and through that of his daughter Queen Tamar in the late 12th century — a warren of about 500 caves with chapels, cells, wine cellars, and tunnels in up to 19 tiers, later damaged by an earthquake in 1283. The frescoed Church of the Dormition, with the earliest known portrait of Tamar, is the centrepiece.

Nearby are the Khertvisi fortress and the alpine Javakheti lakes.

6. Uplistsikhe

Uplistsikhe, near Gori in central Georgia, is one of the oldest urban settlements in the country — a town carved directly into a rocky outcrop above the Mtkvari (Kura), with traces of settlement from the late 2nd millennium BC, which declined for good after Mongol raids in the 14th century. Its rock-cut halls mix pagan and Christian architecture, with a 9th–10th-century basilica crowning the rock.

Gori itself has the museum and preserved birth-house of Joseph Stalin.

7. David Gareja

David Gareja, some 60–70 kilometres southeast of Tbilisi, is a spread-out complex of rock-cut monasteries founded in the 6th century in stark, striped semi-desert. Below lies the original Lavra monastery; a trail climbs to the Udabno caves with faded frescoes and long views into Azerbaijan.

Part of the complex sits on a stretch of the Azerbaijan–Georgia border that the two countries dispute.

8. Kakheti wine country

Kakheti, the eastern lowland below the Caucasus, is the heart of Georgian wine: family cellars and large estates around Telavi and Sighnaghi press grapes like Saperavi and Rkatsiteli and ferment them, skins and all, in buried qvevri — a method on the UNESCO intangible-heritage list. Sighnaghi is a small hill town enclosed by 18th-century walls; nearby are the Bodbe convent and the Alaverdi cathedral.

It makes an easy one- or two-day trip from Tbilisi, ideally around the September harvest.

9. Batumi and the Black Sea coast

Batumi, 20 kilometres from the Turkish border, is Georgia's second-largest city and its main Black Sea resort — a humid, subtropical port with a long beach, a green seafront boulevard, a jumble of brash new towers and restored Belle Époque quarters, and botanical gardens on a headland just north. Inland rise the rainforested hills of Adjara, including Mtirala National Park, part of the Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands, inscribed by UNESCO in 2021 as Georgia's first natural World Heritage Site.

It is linked to Tbilisi by air and by rail.

10. Kutaisi and Prometheus Cave

Kutaisi, Georgia's third-largest city, is the gateway to the western region of Imereti and its great medieval churches: the UNESCO-listed Gelati Monastery, taken off the World Heritage in Danger list in 2017, and Bagrati Cathedral, delisted by UNESCO the same year after a heavy reconstruction. Just outside are two big show caves — Prometheus, with about 1.8 kilometres of its passages open to visitors, and Sataplia, which adds fossilised dinosaur footprints — plus the Okatse canyon walkway and the Martvili canyon boat trip.

Kutaisi's international airport, built up around low-cost flights from Europe, makes it many travellers' entry point to Georgia.

Georgia is small, cheap, and rewarding. A first trip of a week covers Tbilisi, Mtskheta, Kazbegi, and Kakheti; adding Svaneti, the southern cave cities, or the Black Sea coast makes it a comfortable two weeks.