Part Two: West Bank
28. Vashlovani Street 6
The façade of this hotel leaves a very controlled impression, because of the dense web of horizontal and vertical lines.
29. Tamar Chovelidze Street
This Modern Style building is the most impressive on Tamar Chovelidze Street.
30. House of Alexander Melik-Azaryants
Shota Rustaveli Avenue 37
Nikolai Obolensky, 1912-1915
This enormous late Modern Style building occupies an entire block on the other side of the street from the Georgian National Academy of Sciences. It was built by a well-known Tbilisian oil merchant and benefactor in memory of his deceased daughter, as shown by the abundance of mourning wreaths on its façades and by the teardrop-shaped windows at its corner. The complex contained apartments, shops, a cinema, a photo salon, an art gallery, warehouses, and a garden with exotic plants.
31. Shota Rustaveli Avenue 42
The bar-tavern-restaurant named Marco Polo on the Rose Revolution Square has very beautiful Art Nouveau and Oriental interiors, but I couldn’t get any information from the waitresses about their history and authenticity.
32. Dzmebi Zubalashvilebi Street 48/52
Mikhail Ohanjanov, 1902-1906
This massive red-brick structure of Gothic and Art Nouveau inspiration is a former House of Invalids. Like the Marjanishvili Theatre, it was commissioned by the Zubalashvili brothers, after whom the street where the building stands is named.
33. Alexander Chavchavadze I Dead End 1
Mikhail Neprintsev, 1913
This imposing residential building looks like a school house from behind the closed gate on Ritsa Street. It has an intimate courtyard with a beautiful wrought-iron gate and a lantern. Other surviving works by Neprintsev include the buildings on Chkheidze Street 8 and Ingorokva Street 20.
34. Shota Rustaveli Avenue 23
This building has a beautiful façade with a fan-shaped balcony near the corner with Vaso Abashidze Street.
35. Vaso Abashidze Street 1
The only place where one can admire the beautiful façade decoration of this building is the garden of the Georgian National Opera Theatre.
36. Shota Rustaveli Avenue 18
The abundance of plant motifs makes it the most outstanding of the Modern Style buildings on Rustaveli Avenue. It is surprising that I haven’t been able to find any information about an eye-catching structure in such a prominent location.
37. Atoneli Street 27
This attractive building is one of the several examples of recent restoration on the northeastern side of the 9th of April Park.
38. Besik Street 25
The decoration of the upper part of the central avant-corps of this building looks slightly Budapestian to me.
39. Pavle Ingorokva Street 20
Mikhail Neprintsev, 1914
This eclectic building dates from the late Art Nouveau period. Its most remarkable elements include the façade decoration of the main entrance, the vestibule and the bay window facing Shio Chitadze Street.
40. Daniel Chonkadze Street 12
Mikhail Ohanjanov, 1914
This huge building has rows of circular motifs on its façade (common in Georgian Modern Style), a cavernous main entrance (typical of National Romanticism of the Nordic countries), a beautiful vestibule decorated with ceramic tiles, and stained glass looking down onto the staircase. Ohanjanov’s earlier works include the building on Dzmebi Zubalashvilebi Street 48/52 and that of the Mutual Credit Society.
41. Amaghleba Street 9
This massive building, occupying a dominant position at the corner of Amaghleba and Gergeti Streets, has some Modern Style elements.
42. Amaghleba Street 7
This façade on Amaghleba Street has some interesting floral decorations.
43. Kojori Street 3
Pavel Zurabyan, 1905
The placement of decorative details on this façade creates a peaceful effect, which is further reinforced by the building’s location in the periphery of the Sololaki neighbourhood. Zurabyan also designed the much more dynamic house on Tsinamdzghvrishvili Street 39.
44. Geronti Kikodze Street 4
This is probably the most remarkable of the Modern Style structures in the Sololaki neighbourhood. Formerly a residential building, it today houses a public school. Many of its decorative elements, such as leaves leaning on the lower sides of cornices, thick circles surrounded by leaves, mascarons, parallel lines, and a wavy roofline, can be seen in several other buildings of the period in Tbilisi. The volumes are interesting as well.
45. Giorgi Leonidze Street 7
1902
This cute little building originally functioned as a glove atelier. Its thin trapezoid entrance reminds me of some National Romantic buildings in Helsinki.
46. Tbilisi Mutual Credit Society
Giorgi Leonidze Street 3
Mikhail Ohanjanov, 1910-1913
This building, recently renovated, has a monumental Modern Style façade, decorated with sculptures, mascarons, reliefs and colourful ceramic tiles.
47. Tbilisi City Credit Society
Alexander Pushkin Street 3
Simon Kldiashvili, 1902-1903
The Modern Style reconstruction of this 1870s building is a notable work by Simon Kldiashvili, who also designed the house on Rome Street 4. Its treasure is its main hall, which has a big stained-glass ceiling and a cashier’s booth with ornate ironwork. There are Art Nouveau whiplash lines and mascarons in the staircase leading up to it.
48. Shalva Dadiani Street 24
Flower-shaped iron supporting the awning of the doorway
49. Galaktion Tabidze Street 17
This building is very similar to some National Romantic buildings in Riga, Tallinn or Helsinki. Note the rustication and the composition of the side windows.
50. Lado Asatiani Street 38
The more angular shapes on this façade hint that this building must have been built in the later phase of Modern Style.
51. House of David Sarajishvili / Writers’ House of Georgia
Ivane Machabeli Street 13
Carl Zaar – project; Alexander Ozerov & Korneli Tatishev – realisation, 1903-1905
This beautiful building, designed by an architect from Germany, has some Modern Style elements on its façade.
The building has a big garden with an ornate balcony in the back.
Interesting details include the rare Villeroy & Boch tiles on the terrace.
The building was originally the residence of David Sarajishvili, a well-known cognac producer and philanthropist. It was later turned into the Writers’ House, which is why it has had many famous guests, such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Bulgakov, Osip Mandelstam, and Sergei Yesenin, as well as many influential Georgian writers.
Alexander Ozerov, one of the architects who realised the project, designed several notable buildings in Tbilisi, such as the Marriott Hotel and the Neogothic school on Lado Asatiani Street. Korneli Tatishev was one of the architects of the Rustaveli Theatre.
52. Beglar Akhospireli Lane 3/7
This beautiful building, hidden behind the Lado Gudiashvili Square, has an entrance hall with a ceiling painting of a Jugendstil woman.
53. Arzruni Caravanserai / Tbilisi History Museum
Sioni Street 8
1912
The reconstruction of the 17th-century Arzruni Caravanserai in the style of Art Nouveau is a unique phenomenon in the architecture of Tbilisi.
54. Mantashev Rows
Bambis Rigi Street 7
Ghazar Sarkisyan, 1903-1905
The two trading rows follow the curved line of the Bambis Rigi Street (means Cotton Row in Georgian). They were built on the initiative of Alexander Mantashev, an influential oil magnate, industrialist and financier at the turn of the century. Their architect seems to have worked with Mantashev in more than one occasion, as testified, for example, by a house on David Agmashenebeli Avenue 27.
55. Kote Abkhazi Street 42
One of the many examples of Art Nouveau ironwork supporting an awning about a doorway
56. Vakhtang Gorgasali Street 3
This building, King Gorgasali Hotel, is one of the most prominent Art Nouveau building in the old town of Tbilisi.
grande flânerie 