Tbilisi has been sacked by Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Timur and Tsarist armies, and rebuilt each time on the same warm springs. Three days trace it from a 6th-century basilica through Zoroastrian fire altars to the 1989 killings on Rustaveli.
Tbilisi's oldest surviving church: a three-nave stone basilica raised by King Dachi around 522-534 CE, when Kartli's capital moved here from Mtskheta. The brick bell tower is a 1675 addition. Open roughly 09:00-19:00.
Georgia's patriarchal seat until 2004, first built in the 6th-7th centuries and rebuilt after Mongol and Persian sackings. Left of the altar stands St Nino's grapevine cross, relic of the woman who converted Kartli in 337 CE.
The 1278-1289 church sits on the cliff where King Vakhtang Gorgasali built his palace and Tbilisi's first church in the 5th century. Later a Tsarist prison, then a Soviet theatre. Elguja Amashukeli's equestrian Gorgasali stands outside.
A square brick Zoroastrian fire temple of the 5th-7th centuries, wedged between houses in Kldisubani, with a domed roof and traces of the fire altar. Rebuilt under Persian rule and used into the 19th century — one of the last in the Caucasus.
The top floor of the Janashia Museum on Rustaveli 3 documents 1921-1991: the bullet-scarred railway carriage used for Cheka executions, deportation lists, NKVD files and photographs of the tens of thousands shot or exiled.
Outside the former Parliament at Rustaveli 8, a stone memorial marks where Soviet troops and sapper spades broke up a hunger strike on 9 April 1989, killing 21 people, mostly young women. The same steps saw the 2003 Rose Revolution.
Zurab Tsereteli's unfinished monument, begun in 1985 on a hill above the Tbilisi Sea: sixteen pillars around 35 m high, carved with kings, queens and poets on the upper register and the life of Christ below. Unstaffed and open at all hours.
Elguja Amashukeli's 20 m figure was raised on Sololaki ridge in 1958 for the city's claimed 1,500th anniversary, holding a wine bowl for friends and a sword for enemies. The original wood was replaced with aluminium in 1994.
The merchant quarter built on 1860s-1900s oil and caravan money: painted entrance halls, cast-iron banisters and stained glass, best at Lado Asatiani 40 and the Kalantarov house at Machabeli 13, with its frescoed ceiling.
The historically Armenian quarter across the Mtkvari. Sachino is Queen Darejan's 1776 palace, its blue-tiled balcony hanging over the gorge; the Etchmiadzin church of 1804 nearby served the Armenian majority that ran Tbilisi's trade into the 1900s.
A terraced cemetery of Georgian writers on the mountainside. Russian playwright Alexander Griboyedov lies beside his 16-year-old widow Nino Chavchavadze under her epitaph to him; Ilia Chavchavadze and Vazha-Pshavela are buried here too.
The left bank began as Neu-Tiflis, a colony of Swabian German settlers granted land here in 1818. Their grid survives as Davit Aghmashenebeli Avenue, where restored 19th-century facades and deep courtyards mark the old brewers' and joiners' quarter.