Tbilisi Soviet Architecture Tour

Itinerary
This is a typical itinerary for this product

Stop At: The Biltmore Tbilisi Hotel, 29 Shota Rustaveli Ave, T'bilisi 0108, Georgia

Former Marxism-Leninism Institute that was built by the author of Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow A.Shchusev in 1938 . Now it is transformed into one of the most expensive hotels in Tbilisi. History is a really ironic thing sometimes…

Duration: 15 minutes

Stop At: Georgian National Academy of Sciences, 52 Shota Rustaveli Ave, T'bilisi, Georgia

Former “Gruzugol”/Academy of Science building/ with an abandoned ropeway station in the yard. This pompous “palace of proletariat” with a massive tower on the corner demonstrates useless totalitarian luxury of the last years of Stalin's regime.


Duration: 25 minutes

Stop At: Rose Revolution Square, Tbilisi Georgia

Former Republic`s Main square/Rose revolution square/ - the main soviet square of the city where demonstrations and parades took place. Famous Andropov`s tribune is demolished, however we still have an opportunity to check underground levels of the ensemble where soviet mosaics meet weird shady clubs in the darkness of the abandoned shopping complex built in the 1980s.


Duration: 25 minutes

Stop At: Vera Park, 37a Merab Kostava St, Tbilisi 0193 Georgia

Chess palace and Vera park. Chess were national sport in Soviet Georgia. Light, elegant building reflects ideas of the romantic modernism of the 1960s with a trust in better peaceful future for everyone. It still operates and probably we will meet some elder gentlemen playing chess nearby. There are nice view from the park to Mtkvari/Kura river and districts behind it.


Duration: 20 minutes

Stop At: Tbilisi Concert Hall, 1 Petre Melikishvili St., Tbilisi 0179 Georgia

Philarmony. Huge glass cylinder - a typical shape for a soviet modernist concert hall in the 1960-1970s. Transparency of the building connects its interiors with the streets around and Vera park.


Duration: 10 minutes

Stop At: Tbilisi Zoo, Tbilisi, Georgia

Technical Library 1985. This Severe brutalist building is half abandoned now. Its facade concrete panels protect library halls from direct sunlight and surprisingly remind a structure of a gothic cathedral.


Duration: 10 minutes

Stop At: Vake Park, Chavchavadze Avenue, Tbilisi Georgia

Memorial complex "Victory" in Vake Park. The park was opened in 1946. We will check colossal Victory monument with 28 meter high statue and will take a ride in the cabin of the ropeway built in the 1960s to have a look down to the soviet districts of Vake and Saburtalo with Caucasian mountains as a background.


Duration: 40 minutes

Stop At: Central library of Tbilisi State University, 11 University St, T'bilisi, Georgia

Tbilisi State University Campus Complex. One of the largest modernist structures of the ‘70s and ‘80s is the New Complex of Tbilisi State University on the western border of the city. The scope of the project occupied an area of 240 hectares on both sides of the Vera River in the districts of Saburtalo and Bagebi. The section in the Saburtalo side housed educational and administrative buildings, with dormitories on the other shore. The complex was intended to accommodate 8,000 students.


Duration: 40 minutes

Stop At: Vake-Saburtalo Police Station #3, Shalva Nutsubidze St, T'bilisi, Georgia

Apartment blocks of Nutsubidze plateau. Construction: 1974–1976. In the era of mass housing construction and active city growth, it was especially urgent to a find a solution to the problem of erecting high-rise buildings оn Tbilisi’s complex topography. This led to many interesting experiments by local architects. This case is one of the great examples of such experiments. Three high blocks are connected by bridges-galleries between each other and the street on the hill.


Duration: 40 minutes

Stop At: Bank of Georgia Headquarters, 29a Iuri Gagarini St, T'bilisi, Georgia

Former Ministry of Transportation. The most famous modernist building in Tbilisi. It was recognized not only by domestic and foreign media, but also by the party leadership of the country — the work was awarded the USSR Council of Ministers Prize. This is one of the two modernist buildings in Tbilisi that has been officially awarded the status of an architectural monument. It now houses the Bank of Georgia offices. The building directly references several movements of world architecture. These are the organic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and the avant-garde projects of El Lisitsky in the 1920s with their horizontal skyscrapers. In addition, the building meets the five principles of functionalism formulated by Le Corbusier.


Duration: 15 minutes

Stop At: Radio Holding Fortuna Радио Холдинг Фортуна, 2 Marshal Archil Gelovani Ave, T'bilisi, Georgia

Former Managing Computing Centre of the United Board of the Energy System of Transcaucasia. This brutalist structure is placed on the slope of the hill. It looks like a retrofuturist spaceship ready to take off. Together with the Ministry of Transportation they form an impressive modernist architectural ensemble.


Duration: 15 minutes

Stop At: Laboratory of Ministry of Agriculture, 65 Vaso Godziashvili V Turn, T'bilisi, Georgia

Industrial- Pedagogical Technical college. It was famous because of the outstanding base relief. Unfortunately it disappeared after an act of vandalism... However, its composition and harmonious interaction with the landscape is just amazing!

Duration: 10 minutes

Stop At: Saint Nino Monument, 9, Motsikulta Stsori Nino St, T'bilisi, Georgia

Tbilisi Archeology Museum. The former museum is a great example of late soviet modernism. Expressive, dashing forms of it are visible far from the surroundings.​The museum was established in 1988 by the well-known Georgian archeologist, head of the Tbilisi archeological expedition, Rostom Abramishvili (1924-1996). The museum housed monuments, discovered by the archeological excavations in Tbilisi. The chronological frames of the collections were from the V c. B.C. up to the feudal times. There is a legend that firstly this building was planned as a crematorium but later was transformed into museum.


Duration: 20 minutes

Pass By: შპს ემ ემ ეს (412715067), თემქა, არაშენდას მიმდებარედ, T'bilisi, Georgia

Zghvisubani microdistrict. Microdistrict is a residential complex - a primary structural element of the residential area construction in the Soviet Union and in some post-Soviet and former Communist states. Residential districts in most of the cities and towns in the republics of the former Soviet Union were built in accordance with this concept.


Stop At: The Chronicle of Georgia, Chronicles of Georgia Temqa, T'bilisi, Georgia

The Chronicle of Georgia Monument. Dedicated to the glorification of georgian history this strange massive monument was created by Zurab Tsereteli, a Georgian born soviet sculptor and artist. The monument is partially incomplete. It looks like an eccentric kitsch mixture of Stonehenge and an ancient Egyptian temple…Huge pillars, tons of metal, national heroes and saints raising up from the past. Naive collage of official soviet propaganda, nationalism and christianity. Building of the monument began in the late 1980s but never finished.

Views down to the city and Tbilisi Sea are breathtaking!


Duration: 30 minutes