Tbilisi and Imereti unhurried, with two nights in each place. The capital is seen on foot on the second day, from Rustaveli Avenue to the sulphur baths, and the third heads west via Jvari and Svetitskhoveli in Mtskheta, the cave town of Uplistsikhe and the Stalin museum in Gori to Kutaisi. The fourth is the monastery day: Bagrati, above the city, Motsameta, in its gorge, Gelati, with its frescoes, and the detour to Nikortsminda, in Racha, with the most carved façade in the country.
The fifth returns to Tbilisi underground: the Sataplia reserve, with dinosaur footprints and a small cave, and Prometheus Cave, 1.4 km of galleries at 14 degrees, before the 230 km of motorway. The sixth, transfer to the airport. No day goes over 290 km. Hotels in Tbilisi and Kutaisi, category of your choice.
Itinerary
Day 1 - Transfer from Tbilisi airport to the capital
Total road of the day - 18KM 0 Hours and 25 Minutes Arrival. Someone from the team is waiting at the airport with a sign; the rest of the day is yours. Road 18KM 0 Hours and 25 MinutesDay 2 - Tbilisi - Guided tour in Spanish
No driving On today's programme, Rustaveli Avenue, Metekhi Square, Narikala Fortress, Abanotubani and Anchiskhati.Rustaveli Avenue
A kilometre and a half of plane trees between Freedom Square and Rustaveli Square. This is the street where Tbilisi shows off: the Parliament, the Moorish-looking Opera House of 1896, the Rustaveli Theatre, the Kashueti church, the National Museum and the grand hotels of the early 20th century. It is named after Shota Rustaveli, the 12th-century poet who wrote "The Knight in the Panther's Skin", the book every Georgian can quote.
It takes a good half hour on foot, or two metro stops if the heat is on. In front of the Parliament there is a plaque worth stopping for: on 9 April 1989 the Soviet army broke up a demonstration here and twenty-one people died, almost all of them women. That day still weighs on the politics of the country.
Metekhi Square
The king on horseback looking over the city from the cliff is Vakhtang Gorgasali, the founder of Tbilisi according to tradition; the statue dates from 1967. Next to him, the church of Metekhi, from the late 13th century, built by Demetre II on top of another from the 5th. The royal palace stood here for centuries, and in the 19th century and Soviet times the building was a prison: Gorky did time in it. Then it was a theatre, and in 1988 it became a church again.
We come here for the view, the best of the lower town: the sulphur baths right below, Narikala opposite and the river running between the two. It is a fifteen-minute stop that almost always runs longer because of the photos.
Narikala Fortress
We take the cable car that leaves from Rike Park and crosses the river in two minutes; it costs the same as a metro ticket and is paid with the same card. At the top is Narikala, or what is left of it: the Persians founded it in the 4th century, the Arabs enlarged it in the 8th and the Georgians in the 12th, and in 1827 an explosion of the gunpowder store took out a good part of the walls. The church of St Nicholas inside dates from 1997, on medieval foundations.
The reason to come up is not the stones but the view: the whole old town, the domes of the baths, the river and Metekhi opposite. Careful, the walls have no railings and the rock is polished by so many feet. From here we walk down through the Betlemi quarter to the baths, passing the Mother of Georgia on the way, the aluminium statue of 1958 that watches over the city with a cup in one hand and a sword in the other.
Abanotubani
Tbilisi means "warm place", and the warmth comes from here. Abanotubani is the sulphur bath district, on the right bank of the Mtkvari just below Narikala: brick domes at ground level with the baths underneath, and water that comes up on its own at 37 to 40 degrees and smells of eggs. Legend has it that King Vakhtang Gorgasali founded the city in the 5th century after seeing a wounded pheasant healed in these waters. Pushkin bathed here in 1829 and wrote that he had never seen anything like it.
You can stroll and look, but what is worth it is going in: a private room with a hot-water pool and, if you like, a scrub with a coarse mitt that leaves you like new. Booking is needed in high season, and you bring swimwear and a towel or rent them. The blue-tiled façade belongs to the Orbeliani bath; the others are plainer outside.
Anchiskhati
It is the oldest church still standing in Tbilisi, and it does not look it: a small three-nave basilica of plain stone, tucked into a street of the old town. King Dachi, son of Vakhtang Gorgasali, built it around the year 530. The name comes from the Christ icon of Ancha, which arrived here in 1664 from an area that is now Turkey and is now kept in the Art Museum. The brick bell tower of 1675 is what you see from the street.
If it falls on a Sunday morning, we go in during the liturgy: the Anchiskhati choir sings Georgian polyphony the way it was sung centuries ago, and it is one of the things people remember most from the trip. On other days it is almost empty and takes ten minutes. There are headscarves at the door for women.
Day 3 - Tbilisi - Mtskheta - Uplistsikhe - Gori - Kutaisi
Total road of the day - 267KM 4 Hours and 44 Minutes We leave after breakfast. On the programme, Jvari, Svetitskhoveli, Uplistsikhe and Stalin Museum; 267 km in short stretches. Road 25KM 0 Hours and 36 MinutesJvari, the Monastery of the Cross
From the Tbilisi road you can see a small church on top of a bare hill above Mtskheta. It is Jvari, "the cross", and it is there because, according to tradition, in the 4th century St Nino planted a wooden cross on that spot when she converted Georgia. The present church was built between 586 and 605 and became the model for many others in the country: a cross plan with four apses and a dome in the middle, with hardly any decoration. It is a UNESCO site together with Mtskheta.
What you remember is the view: below, the Aragvi and the Mtkvari meet, each a different colour, with Svetitskhoveli cathedral in between. Lermontov set his poem "Mtsyri" here. It is almost always windy, so a jacket is not a bad idea even in July. Twenty minutes, half an hour if the day is clear.
Road 13KM 0 Hours and 18 Minutes
Svetitskhoveli
For a Georgian this is the cathedral, full stop. It stands in Mtskheta, the old capital, 20 km from Tbilisi, and the present building went up between 1010 and 1029 on the site of the 4th-century church of King Mirian, the one who converted the country to Christianity. Beneath it, according to tradition, lies the robe of Christ: a Jew from Mtskheta brought it from Jerusalem, his sister Sidonia died clutching it and they were buried together; a cedar grew from the spot, and from its trunk came the pillar that gives the church its name, "the life-giving pillar". Kings were crowned and buried here; the slabs of Vakhtang Gorgasali and Erekle II are in the floor.
A UNESCO site since 1994, and at weekends the weddings follow one another, so sometimes you wait at the door. Headscarves for women and covered shoulders for everyone. Half an hour inside, another in the lanes around it, which live off tourism but keep the feel of a village.
Road 61KM 1 Hours and 5 Minutes
Uplistsikhe
A whole town cut into the rock, 10 km from Gori above the Mtkvari river. People lived at Uplistsikhe from the first millennium BC until the Middle Ages: first a pagan centre, then a Christian one, and always a stop for the caravans. What remains are carved streets, a hall with a ceiling imitating wooden beams (they call it "Queen Tamar's hall"), wine presses, a tunnel down to the river and a 10th-century brick church planted on top of it all. The Mongols emptied it in the 13th century and it never recovered.
One piece of advice: in summer there is no shade and the rock burns, so go early or late in the day, and wear shoes with grip, because the polished stone is slippery. An hour is enough to climb up to the church and look down at the river.
Road 14KM 0 Hours and 20 Minutes
Stalin Museum
Gori is the town where Iosif Dzhugashvili was born in 1878, and the museum dedicated to him in 1957 is still open much as it was then. It is three things: the little wooden house where he was born, protected under a pavilion of columns; the main building, a Soviet-style palace with his personal belongings, photographs, gifts from heads of state and one of the bronze copies of his death mask; and the armoured railway carriage in which he travelled to Yalta and Potsdam, because he did not like flying.
Let us be plain: the museum tells the kind version. There is a small room on the repression, added late, and little else. We tell the rest on the road, and the one-hour visit usually ends in a long conversation in the car.
Road 154KM 2 Hours and 25 Minutes
Day 4 - Kutaisi - Bagrati - Motsameta - Gelati - Nikortsminda-Kutaisi
Total road of the day - 192KM 4 Hours and 21 Minutes Bagrati Cathedral, Motsameta, Gelati Academy and Nikortsminda. It is 192 km; we leave early so as not to rush. Road 2KM 0 Hours and 9 MinutesBagrati Cathedral
You can see it from half of Kutaisi, so you arrive already knowing what it is. What you cannot see from below is the controversy: Bagrat III consecrated it in 1003, the Ottomans blew it up in 1692 and it stood in ruins for three centuries until, in 2012, it was rebuilt in full, with concrete and a glass lift stuck to one side. UNESCO took it off the list in 2017 for that. Some people see it as a botch job. We still like it, mostly for the site: the terrace has the best view of the city and the Rioni valley. Ten minutes uphill from the centre and a full circuit of the building to find the original carvings left on the walls.
Road 8KM 0 Hours and 17 Minutes
Motsameta
First the legend, because it is what you are told the moment you arrive: in the 8th century the Arabs killed the brothers David and Konstantin Mkheidze, nobles of Argveti, for refusing to give up their faith, and that is where the monastery gets its name, "the place of the martyrs". Their relics lie in a casket inside the church and passing under it three times, they say, grants a wish. Then the site: a rocky spur above the Tskaltsitela canyon ("red water" in Georgian), ten minutes from Kutaisi. The present building is 11th century, much altered.
Half an hour is enough. The best part is not the church, it is the balcony over the gorge.
Road 4KM 0 Hours and 8 Minutes
Gelati Academy
David the Builder asked to be buried in the floor of the south gate, so that everyone who came in would step on his grave. He has been there since 1125, and the monastery of Gelati, which he founded in 1106, was for centuries the great school of the kingdom: in its academy Greek philosophy was translated and copied at a time when Georgia looked to Byzantium. A UNESCO site since 1994 and, unlike Bagrati, still on the list. As soon as you enter the main church, the 12th-century mosaic of the Virgin in the apse; then frescoes on every wall, from different centuries. We give it almost an hour between the church, the tomb, the academy (a long hall with stone benches) and the church of St George. The domes were under repair for years because of leaks [VERIFICAR: estado de la restauración del tejado en 2026].
Road 58KM 1 Hours and 15 Minutes
Nikortsminda
This is the debatable detour of the day, and we are the ones saying so, since we are the ones who include it: an hour and a quarter of mountain road from Gelati and 120 km back to Kutaisi that feel long once it gets dark. Why is it worth it? The façade. Nikortsminda cathedral is small, built in 1010-1014 under Bagrat III, but its outer walls are the most elaborately carved in Georgia: the Last Judgement, St George, animals, vines, all cut in stone. Inside, 17th-century frescoes. If you would rather shorten the day, it can be left out and the time given to Gelati; just say so when you book. In good weather we also stop at the viewpoint over the Shaori reservoir, which is on the way.
Road 120KM 2 Hours and 32 Minutes
Day 5 - Kutaisi - Sataplia - Prometheus Cave - Tbilisi
Total road of the day - 288KM 4 Hours and 45 Minutes First Sataplia, then Prometheus Cave. 288 km, 4 hours 45 minutes; lunch on the way. Road 12KM 0 Hours and 20 MinutesSataplia
Dinosaur footprints 10 km from Kutaisi: some two hundred of them, 120 million years old, on a limestone slab under a pavilion, one of the few places in the world where you see the prints of carnivores and herbivores together. That is why the Sataplia reserve exists, whose name means "place of honey" after the wild beehives that used to be in its rocks. The rest is a Colchic forest, the humid forest that covered this whole coast before humans, a 300-metre cave with lit stalactites and, at the end, a glass-floored viewpoint over Kutaisi.
An hour and a half. It works very well with children, mostly because of the life-size plastic dinosaurs among the trees, which adults could do without and they cannot.
Prometheus Cave
Inside it is 14 degrees all year round, which is welcome in summer and in winter too: bring a jacket. Prometheus Cave is at Kumistavi, 20 km from Kutaisi, next to the spa town of Tskaltubo. It was discovered in 1984 and opened to the public in 2011 with a route of just over a kilometre through six of its 22 halls, on concrete walkways with coloured lights that some people like and others do not. The name is for the titan who, according to the Greeks, ended up chained in these mountains; Georgians call him Amirani.
The visit takes a good hour. At the end, if the underground river has enough water, you can leave by boat along a stretch of about 300 metres, paid separately; when the level drops, you walk out. The floor is damp and slippery, so closed shoes are better.
