The Most Beautiful Places in Georgia
21 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Georgia are Gergeti Trinity Church, Ushguli and Martvili Canyon Natural Monument. The list covers 21 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Georgia lies along the Greater Caucasus, where peaks above 5,000 metres shelter valleys that kept their own languages, towers and customs for centuries. Christianity arrived in the fourth century, and the country developed a distinctive tradition of stone churches with conical domes set on hilltops and cliffs. Volcanic tuff in the south was soft enough to carve whole towns into rock, and limestone in the west hollowed into caves.
Uplistsikhe is a rock-hewn town above the Mtkvari river, inhabited from the Iron Age into the Middle Ages, and Vardzia, carved into a cliff in the twelfth century under Queen Tamar, is a monastery of hundreds of caves on many levels. At Mtskheta, the old capital, Svetitskhoveli Cathedral stands in the town, and Jvari Monastery, built in the sixth century, watches from the hill above the meeting of two rivers. Near Kutaisi, Gelati Monastery, founded in 1106 by King David the Builder, keeps a twelfth-century apse mosaic among walls of frescoes, and Prometheus Cave opens a long run of halls with stalactites underground.
In the mountains, Mount Kazbek's glaciated volcanic cone rises above the Gergeti Trinity Church, and Ananuri fortress, with its two churches, stands on the shore of a reservoir on the Aragvi. Shatili is a fortified village of stone towers in Khevsureti, close to the Chechen border, and the Katskhi Pillar is a limestone monolith some 40 metres tall with a small church on its top. In Tbilisi, the glass-and-steel Bridge of Peace, opened in 2010, curves across the Mtkvari.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gergeti Trinity Church | Church building | |
| 2 | Ushguli | Most beautiful village | |
| 3 | Martvili Canyon Natural Monument | Canyon | |
| 4 | Vardzia | Rock-cut architecture | |
| 5 | Lake Ritsa | Lake | |
| 6 | Katskhi Pillar | Rock formation | |
| 7 | Ushba | Mountain | |
| 8 | Shatili | Most beautiful village | |
| 9 | Uplistsikhe | Archaeological site | |
| 10 | Bridge of Peace | Bridge | |
| 11 | Jvari Monastery, Mtskheta | Monastery | ✓ |
| 12 | Mount Kazbek | Volcano | |
| 13 | Ananuri | Castle | |
| 14 | Gelati Monastery | Monastery | ✓ |
| 15 | Prometheus Cave | Cave | |
| 16 | Svetitskhoveli Cathedral | Cathedral | |
| 17 | Anacopia Fortress | Fortress | |
| 18 | Chronicle of Georgia | Monument | |
| 19 | David Gareja Monastery Complex | Monastery | |
| 20 | New Athos Monastery | Monastery | |
| 21 | Sukhum Fortress (Sebastopolis) | Fortress |
01 Gergeti Trinity Church
Georgia42.662° N 44.620° E
Image by MurrrPhoto from Pixabay Some buildings are beautiful in themselves; Gergeti Trinity is beautiful because of where someone dared to put it. The small stone church stands alone on a grassy ridge at about 2,170 metres, high above the village of Stepantsminda in the Greater Caucasus, with the glaciated cone of Mount Kazbek rising behind it.
Did you know? According to tradition, St Nino's grapevine cross, sheltered here in times of danger, is bound with the saint's own hair.
02 Ushguli
Georgia42.918° N 43.016° E
Image by gongdo from Pixabay Ushguli is a community of small villages at the head of the Enguri valley in Upper Svaneti, set at about 2,100 metres and counted among the highest continuously inhabited settlements in Europe.
Did you know? The 2014 census counted 228 residents in about seventy families, all of them Svans, who still speak their own Svan language.
03 Martvili Canyon Natural Monument
Georgia · 37.1 km from Kutaisi42.456° N 42.376° E
Lasha ge · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Abasha river runs an improbable shade of deep green through Martvili Canyon, sliding between walls of pale limestone hung with ferns and moss and dropping over a series of waterfalls.
Did you know? The Dadiani staircase down to the water has 30 limestone steps, and legend links it with the monk George the Hagiorite and King David IV the Builder.
04 Vardzia
Georgia41.381° N 43.284° E
The coffe girl · CC BY-SA 4.0 Work began here under King Giorgi III in the late 12th century, but it was his daughter, Queen Tamar — the only woman ever to hold the Georgian royal title "king" — who turned it into a vast fortress-monastery carved straight into the cliff of Mount Erusheli, built as a hidden refuge from Mongol and Seljuk incursions.
Did you know? Archaeologists counted 185 clay wine jars sunk into the rock floors of the complex.
05 Lake Ritsa
Georgia43.481° N 40.541° E
Image by Mari_555 from Pixabay Lake Ritsa lies in a deep forested gorge of the western Caucasus in Abkhazia, about 950 metres above sea level, hemmed in by mountains that rise to more than 3,000 metres.
Did you know? Snow around the lake normally lies 2 to 3 metres deep, and in severe winters it can pile up to 7 to 11 metres.
06 Katskhi Pillar
Georgia42.288° N 43.216° E
Aleksey Muhranoff · CC BY-SA 3.0 In a quiet valley of Imereti, in western Georgia, a single column of limestone about 40 metres high rises straight out of the forest, and on its narrow summit stands a small stone church with a cluster of cells.
Did you know? The 13th-century inscription, cut in the old Georgian asomtavruli script on a small limestone plate, was found in 2007 and also names the Pillar of Life.
07 Ushba
Georgia43.124° N 42.660° E
Vadim Tolbatov · CC BY-SA 4.0 Ushba is the mountain climbers draw when they imagine the Caucasus: two great rock towers side by side, linked by a high saddle, rising above the green valleys of Svaneti in north-western Georgia.
Did you know? In 1934 the first Georgian team stood on Ushba, and Alexandra Japaridze became the first woman to reach its summit.
08 Shatili
Georgia42.658° N 45.157° E
Jaba1977 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Shatili looks less like a village than a single stone fortress: some sixty flat-roofed towers and tower-houses are packed together on a rocky shelf above the Arghuni River, linked by covered passages and stairways so that the whole settlement could be defended as one block.
Did you know? The Georgian poet Vazha-Pshavela set the events of his 1888 narrative poem Aluda Ketelauri in Shatili.
09 Uplistsikhe
Georgia · 35.2 km from Tskhinvali41.967° N 44.208° E
Image by falco from Pixabay Uplistsikhe, "the lord's fortress", is a town carved out of a sandstone ridge on the left bank of the Mtkvari river in eastern Georgia, about 10 km east of Gori.
Did you know? The so-called Hall of Queen Tamar, a two-columned hall carved in the Hellenistic period, was later converted into a royal residence.
10 Bridge of Peace
Georgia · 4.1 km from Tbilisi41.693° N 44.808° E
Image by archikl from Pixabay Michele De Lucchi's 2010 footbridge over the Kura River was engineered less as a crossing than as a light installation you happen to walk through.
Did you know? The span is about 150 metres long and only around five metres wide, resting on four supports.
11 Jvari Monastery, Mtskheta
Georgia · 13.2 km from Tbilisi41.838° N 44.733° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Alexxx1979 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Jvari stands alone on a rocky hilltop at 656 metres, above the point where the Aragvi runs into the Mtkvari (Kura) and across the water from Mtskheta, the old capital of the kingdom of Iberia.
Did you know? A small kneeling figure carved on the drum of the dome may be a portrait of the church's unknown architect.
12 Mount Kazbek
Georgia42.697° N 44.519° E
Rafał Kozubek · CC BY-SA 3.0 Mount Kazbek is a dormant volcano of 5,054 metres on the main ridge of the Greater Caucasus, and its appeal is simple: it rises alone. Where most high Caucasian peaks hide behind their neighbours, Kazbek stands as a single white cone above the deep valley of the Terek, visible from the road far below.
Did you know? Glaciers on the massif cover a combined area of about 135 square kilometres, flowing down every side of the summit dome.
13 Ananuri
Georgia42.164° N 44.704° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay Ananuri is the picture everyone takes on the way north from Tbilisi: a walled compound with a tall square tower and two churches, standing on a slope above the Aragvi, with the blue water of the Zhinvali Reservoir spread out below.
Did you know? Four years after the 1739 massacre, local peasants rose against the usurping duke, killed his men and invited King Teimuraz II to rule them directly.
14 Gelati Monastery
Georgia · 5.9 km from Kutaisi42.295° N 42.768° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Makalu from Pixabay Gelati sits on a wooded hillside above the Tskaltsitela gorge a few kilometres northeast of Kutaisi, and it was built to be both a monastery and a university.
Did you know? The apse mosaic is the only complete medieval mosaic decoration to survive in Georgia, with the Virgin and Child flanked by archangels.
15 Prometheus Cave
Georgia · 17.7 km from Kutaisi42.377° N 42.601° E
Alexey Komarov · CC BY-SA 4.0 Prometheus Cave, known locally as Kumistavi Cave, lies near Tskaltubo in the Imereti region of western Georgia, within the Sataplia–Tskaltubo karst massif. 8 km. The cave is a small part of a much bigger system joined by an underground river, of which about 30 km has so far been explored.
Did you know? The air inside stays at roughly 14 to 17 °C throughout the year, regardless of the season outside.
16 Svetitskhoveli Cathedral
Georgia · 14 km from Tbilisi41.842° N 44.721° E
This Photo was taken by Supanut Arunoprayote . Feel free to use any of my images, but please mention me as the author and may send me a message. (สามารถใช้ภาพได้อิสระ แต่กรุณาใส่เครดิตผู้ถ่ายและอาจส่ง ข้อความบอกกล่าวด้วย ) Please do not upload an updated image here without consultation with the Author. The author would like to make corrections only at his own source. This ensures that the changes are preserved. Please if you think that any changes should be required, please inform the author. Otherwise you can upload a new image with a new name. Please use one of the templates derivative or extract . · CC BY 4.0 Svetitskhoveli, the Cathedral of the Living Pillar, has been the spiritual centre of Georgia for most of the last thousand years. Built of sandy yellow stone and enclosed by fortified walls, it stands in the old town of Mtskheta, where the Aragvi joins the Kura.
Did you know? Inside stands a small stone chapel of the late 13th or early 14th century built as a copy of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
17 Anacopia Fortress
Georgia · 19.2 km from Sukhumi43.094° N 40.808° E
Hons084 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Anacopia Fortress crowns Mount Iverian above New Athos, with the Black Sea spread out below. It is one of the best-preserved early medieval strongholds on the eastern shore of that sea. The walls enclose an area of about 450 by 150 metres.
Did you know? A second Arab campaign, led by Suleiman ibn Isam in 788, also failed to take the fortress.
18 Chronicle of Georgia
Georgia · 5.2 km from Tbilisi41.771° N 44.810° E
Eric Luth (WMSE) · CC BY 4.0 On a hilltop above the Tbilisi Sea, sixteen colossal pillars rise in a ring at the top of a long flight of steps, each between 30 and 35 metres high and covered from top to bottom in bronze relief. Locals call the ensemble the "Georgian Stonehenge".
Did you know? Tsereteli also created the 98-metre statue of Peter the Great in Moscow, completed in 1997, which drew mixed reactions from Muscovites.
19 David Gareja Monastery Complex
Georgia · 30.5 km from Rustavi41.448° N 45.376° E
Vyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0 On the dry ridge of Gareja, where eastern Georgia fades into steppe, a sixth-century hermit started something that became one of the strangest monastic landscapes in the Christian world.
Did you know? One of the first offshoots, founded by David's disciple Dodo, is still known as Dodo's Rka, literally "the horn of Dodo".
20 New Athos Monastery
Georgia · 17.9 km from Sukhumi43.088° N 40.821° E
Hons084 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The monastery at New Athos is laid out like a small walled town at the foot of a mountain: long residential ranges enclosing a courtyard, a tall bell tower at the centre of the western range, and in the middle the five domes of the cathedral of St Panteleimon rising above everything.
Did you know? Archimandrite Hieron led the community for 32 years, from 1880 to 1912, and one of its churches is dedicated to his patron saint, the martyr Hieron.
21 Sukhum Fortress (Sebastopolis)
Georgia · 2.8 km from Sukhumi42.995° N 41.017° E
Natalia Senatorova · CC BY-SA 4.0 The fortress on the seafront of Sukhum is layered history in the most literal sense: Roman, Byzantine, medieval, Ottoman and Russian walls stacked on one another at the point where the Dioscurias embankment becomes the Makhajirs embankment. It began in the second century AD as Sebastopolis, a Roman coastal fort.
Did you know? Much of the ancient city has sunk beneath the Black Sea, and divers have found remains of towers and walls of Sebastopolis underwater.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Georgia?
- On our list, Gergeti Trinity Church ranks first, followed by Ushguli and Martvili Canyon Natural Monument.
- What is Vardzia?
- Vardzia is a cave monastery cut into the slope of Erusheti mountain in southern Georgia in the twelfth century, during the reign of Queen Tamar. It contained hundreds of rooms on many levels, including a church with frescoes, and much of the outer cliff collapsed in an earthquake in 1283.
- What is the Katskhi Pillar?
- It is a natural limestone pillar about 40 metres high in western Georgia, with the remains of an early medieval hermitage on its summit. Stylite monks lived on top of it, and in the 1990s a church was restored there and a monk took up residence again.
- Why is Svetitskhoveli Cathedral important?
- Svetitskhoveli in Mtskheta is one of the most sacred churches in Georgia: tradition holds that Christ's robe is buried beneath it. The present building dates from the eleventh century, and it is part of the Historical Monuments of Mtskheta World Heritage Site.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Georgia?
- In our collection, the places in Georgia are most often monasteries (4), mountains (2), fortresses (2) and villages (2).
- How many places are on this list in Georgia?
- The list covers 21 places.