Explore Tbilisi: The Capital Beyond the Old Town

The Mtatsminda ridge rises directly above the centre and carries a large hilltop park along the top of it — a genuine public space with woodland walks, a Ferris wheel and a long terrace looking out over the whole river basin, rather than merely a viewpoint to tick off. Georgians treat it as somewhere to spend an afternoon, and it works best on that basis. The funicular that climbs to it is the enjoyable way up and a practical one: this is a serious hill, and walking it in summer is a different proposition from what the distance suggests. Partway up, the Mtatsminda Pantheon holds the graves of many of the country's writers and public figures in a quiet terraced churchyard, which is a considerably more affecting stop than its listing usually suggests.

The capital has more water than its reputation allows. Turtle Lake, small and wooded on the slopes above Vake, is the easy one — reachable by cable car, ringed by a walking path, and busy with families and swimmers through the summer. Lisi Lake, further out, is bigger, flatter and more open, with a circuit path that has become the city's default running and evening-walking route. Further still, the Tbilisi Sea is a reservoir substantial enough to have beaches and windsurfing, and it is where the city goes when the summer heat in the valley becomes genuinely unpleasant. None of these are sights in the guidebook sense. They are what the city does with its weekends, and using them is the quickest way to feel like a resident rather than a visitor.

On the wooded slope above Turtle Lake sits the Ethnographic Museum, an open-air collection of traditional houses brought from every region of Georgia and rebuilt on the hillside — Svan tower dwellings, Kakhetian farmhouses, mountain granaries, each furnished as it would have been. For a visitor whose trip will not reach every region, it is the single most efficient way to understand how differently Georgians have built and lived across a small country, and it is pleasant simply as a walk in the woods. Lower down, the National Botanical Garden occupies the ravine behind Narikala, a long green gorge with a waterfall that most people never realise is directly behind the fortress they have just climbed. Vake Park anchors the newer city on the other side of the valley. Together these are the reason Tbilisi rewards a slower stay: the capital has depth in the ordinary sense, not only the historic one.