Tbilisi's culture runs from Pirosmani's oilcloth beggars to nine-part polyphonic chant and Sololaki stairwells glazed by Belle Époque merchants. Three days of national galleries, a Moorish opera house, marionette theatre and a Soviet factory turned studio yard.
A 1930s Soviet sewing factory in Chughureti reborn as the city's creative yard: graffiti walls, ceramic and jewellery studios, a screen-printing workshop and Impact Hub offices. The courtyard is open round the clock, cafés from 08:00.
The 1888 neoclassical hall on Rustaveli holds the Georgian canon — some 40 Niko Pirosmani oilcloths including Actress Margarita, Lado Gudiashvili's feast scenes and David Kakabadze's Imereti landscapes. Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00.
Art Nouveau mansion built in 1905 for cognac magnate David Sarajishvili, with stained glass, wrought-iron banisters and the room where poet Paolo Iashvili shot himself in 1937. Now a literary centre hosting readings and translations.
Sololaki's tenements hide Belle Époque glasswork: the Kaleidoscope House at Lado Asatiani 24 and the 1912 Melik-Azariants block, built by Armenian and German merchants who imported their tiles and stained glass from Europe.
The flagship national museum: its basement Archaeological Treasury shows Colchian gold from Vani, granulated 5th-century BCE jewellery and the 1.8-million-year-old Dmanisi hominin skulls. The top floor covers the Soviet occupation.
Georgia's national stage since 1887, rebuilt in 1901 in Rococo with a mirrored foyer and the Mephisto café beneath. Home of Robert Sturua's Shakespeare productions; several Georgian-language shows carry English surtitles.
The Zakaria Paliashvili theatre, a Moorish-revival pile of 1851 rebuilt after fire in 1896 and restored in 2016, with a horseshoe auditorium in gold and blue. Opera and ballet run September to July, dark in August.
Gabriadze's puppet theatre on Shavteli stages The Battle of Stalingrad and Ramona with hand-carved marionettes and English surtitles, in a hall of about 80 seats. The leaning brick clock tower outside chimes on the hour.
Vendors spread Soviet medals, Zeiss lenses, silver niello, Georgian film posters and hand-painted enamel on blankets along the Mtkvari beside Dedaena Park, while painters sell canvases on the slope below. Daily from about 09:00.
A single Old Town house on Samghebro Street holding roughly 300 instruments — panduri, chonguri, salamuri, doli and the Abkhaz apkhiartsa — alongside wax-cylinder recordings of three-part polyphonic chant made from 1907 onwards.
Tsereteli's museum fills a converted 1930s Rustaveli cinema with his enamels, bronzes and large canvases across three floors, plus rotating shows of Georgian contemporary painting and a sculpture-crammed inner courtyard.
The terraced cemetery around Mama Daviti church on the Mtatsminda slope holds Ilia Chavchavadze, Nikoloz Baratashvili, Vazha-Pshavela and Alexander Griboyedov, whose grave carries his teenage widow Nino Chavchavadze's vow.