The Bridge of Peace and New Tbilisi: Reading the City's Second Act

The Bridge of Peace is a 150-metre glass-and-steel footbridge (2010, architect Michele De Lucchi) linking Tbilisi's Old Town to the redeveloped Rike district on the river's east bank. It's best understood not as a single sight but as the hinge of a short walk — bridge, park, cable car, and skyline — that shows how the capital chose to sit its contemporary architecture directly against its oldest quarter rather than build a new city elsewhere.

The Bridge of Peace

Best for a first orientation to the city

Completed in 2010 to a design by Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, the Bridge of Peace curves 150 metres across the Mtkvari on twin boomerang-shaped steel supports that never touch the water, roofed in a glass canopy strung with roughly 1,240 LED lights. It was commissioned in the aftermath of the 2008 war as a literal and symbolic reconciliation of the two riverbanks, and locals nicknamed it — not always kindly — for its sanitary-pad silhouette. The nickname stuck, and so, eventually, did affection for the bridge itself. Cross it at blue hour, when the internal lighting turns the glass into a floating ribbon, and the view does the explaining: Narikala Fortress rises on one bank, the Presidential Palace's glass dome catches the last light on the other, and the Old Town's tiled roofs run down to the water between them. It is the clearest single vantage point on what this walk is about.

Rike Park

Best for families and evening strolls

Rike Park is the flat, landscaped riverside ground the Bridge of Peace lands on, part of the same wave of 2010s civic redevelopment that gave Tbilisi its cable car and much of its contemporary skyline. It functions less as a manicured showpiece than as a working public space: skateboarders use its ramps, families use its open lawns, and chess players use its fixed tables most afternoons. What makes it worth pausing in rather than just crossing is the sightline it offers back toward the bridge and the Old Town rising behind it — a view that reverses the one you get standing on the bridge itself, and at night, with the bridge lit and Narikala floodlit above the rooftops, it's one of the more striking free views in the city.

Narikala Fortress and the Rike cable car

Best for panoramic views

From Rike Park, a cable car (2.5 GEL) lifts you in minutes to Narikala Fortress, a citadel with roots as a 4th-century Persian stronghold, expanded over seventeen centuries by Arab, Mongol, and Georgian rulers before an 1827 munitions explosion shattered much of its structure. What survives commands one of the region's great urban views: the Mtkvari bending below, the domed roofs of the Abanotubani bath district, and the gold-domed Holy Trinity Cathedral rising on the opposite hill. The rebuilt St. Nicholas Church inside the fortress walls (1996, replacing a version demolished under Soviet rule) is worth the short walk up, but the real reason to make this leg of the trip is the vantage: this is where the whole logic of the walk — old citadel, new bridge, riverside park — resolves into a single view.

Metekhi Church and cliff terrace

Best for history and quiet

Across the river and a short walk upstream from the bridge, Metekhi Church has stood on its sheer cliff above the Mtkvari since the 13th century, built by King Demetrius II as both sanctuary and stronghold. It survived Mongol and Persian destruction and a Soviet-era plan to raze it for a theatre. The interior is modest, holding fragments of original frescoes and a revered copy of the Metekhi Icon of the Virgin, but the terrace outside is the point: standing here, with the equestrian statue of Tbilisi's founder King Vakhtang Gorgasali behind you, you see exactly why the city grew where it did — river below, Old Town climbing the opposite bank, Narikala watching from above. It's a five-minute stop that quietly explains the geography everything else on this walk depends on.

Holy Trinity Cathedral (Sameba)

Best for understanding modern Georgian identity

Visible from the bridge as a gold dome on the eastern skyline, Sameba is worth the detour up Elia Hill on its own terms. Consecrated in 2004 after a decade of construction, it was built to mark 1,500 years of Georgian autocephaly and to answer, in stone, the thousands of churches destroyed under Soviet rule. Its 87-metre central dome was gilded using traditional Georgian methods, and the complex — cathedral, monastery, seminary, and the Patriarch's residence — was built to hold 15,000 worshippers. The underground Chapel of St. King David the Builder, with frescoes of Georgia's nine martyred kings, and the bronze doors depicting the life of Christ are the details worth seeking out. Dress modestly; services are most active on Sunday mornings.

The Presidential Palace and Public Service Hall

Best for spotting how 'new Tbilisi' actually looks

Two buildings, best seen rather than entered, sum up the architectural ambition behind this whole district. The Presidential Palace, completed in 2009 with a glass dome added by the same architect who designed the Bridge of Peace, sits on the left bank near Avlabari and is visible — deliberately — from the bridge itself; it is not open to the public, but the exterior view from the riverside path is the intended one. Nearby, the Public Service Hall's cluster of glass, mushroom-shaped pavilions houses multiple government agencies under one transparent roof, a literal architectural argument for administrative openness. Neither building rewards a special trip on its own, but glimpsed together from the bridge or the riverside path, they're the clearest evidence of what Tbilisi's post-2000s planners were trying to say with glass and steel.

Old Town and Abanotubani sulfur baths

Best way to end the walk

Finish by walking back across the bridge into the Old Town proper, where the contrast the whole route has been building toward pays off. Tbilisi's oldest quarter takes its name and its founding legend from the Abanotubani bath district, where a falcon belonging to King Vakhtang Gorgasali is said to have fallen into a hot spring in the 5th century, revealing the sulfur waters that gave the city its name — 'warm place.' The brick-domed bathhouses, most visibly the blue-tiled Orbeliani Baths, still channel 40°C mineral water into private and shared rooms, a ritual that drew Pushkin and Dumas and still draws Tbilisi residents on any given evening. After an afternoon spent looking at glass and steel, ending in centuries-old stone and steam is the point.

Practical information

The bridge and Rike Park are free and open around the clock; the Narikala cable car runs during daylight hours for a nominal fare (2.5 GEL) and is the easiest way up the ridge, though a steep 20-minute path from Meidan Square is the free alternative. Sameba is open 8am–10pm daily with dress-code enforcement (covered shoulders and knees). Everything described sits within Tbilisi's compact centre and is reachable on foot from Liberty Square, Avlabari, or Old Town metro stations — no car is needed for any of it. April–June and September–October give the most comfortable walking conditions; the cobblestones and hill paths get slippery in winter ice and the open riverside stretches are exposed in summer's midday heat, so an evening walk in July or August works better than an afternoon one.

Frequently asked

Quick answers before you pack the walking shoes.

Is the Bridge of Peace worth visiting if I only have one day in Tbilisi?

Yes — it takes ten minutes to cross and sits directly between the Old Town and Rike Park, so it costs you almost no detour time while giving the clearest single view of how the city's old and new architecture sit against each other.

What's the best time of day to see the bridge?

Just after sunset, when the LED lighting inside the glass canopy becomes visible against a sky that isn't yet fully dark — the effect is far less dramatic in full daylight or full darkness.

Can you go inside the Presidential Palace?

No, it's an active government residence and not open to the public; it's viewed from the riverside path or the bridge itself, which is how it was designed to be seen from this walk.

Do I need to book the Narikala cable car in advance?

No — it's a pay-as-you-go city cable car (2.5 GEL) departing from a station in Rike Park, with no reservation system and typically short waits outside peak summer weekends.

Why do locals dislike the Bridge of Peace's design?

Its curved white canopy earned it an unflattering nickname on account of its shape almost immediately after opening in 2010; the criticism has softened over time into something closer to affectionate teasing, and it remains one of the most photographed structures in the city.