Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia 2026

I visited Georgia in Late April and May, staying in Tbilisi with visits to Baku, Yerevan and Batumi. Overall, I would say that the region is interesting with a lot of history, fantastic scenery and great prices, but maintenance in Georgia was generally lacking and food variety could have been better. Still, I enjoyed my time.

Tbilisi

Tbilisi had relatively standard architecture for an ex-Soviet city - a mix of pre-Soviet buildings, a large quantity of depressing Soviet apartment complexes, and a variety of grandiose official structures. There has been a good bit of construction since then, with a few modern structures and skyscrapers making an appearance - but not quite as many as Batumi.

Tbilisi also had some remarkable monuments, from the “Mother of Georgia” statue to the huge pillars of the “Chronicle of Georgia”.

The subways are incredibly deep, and the escalators take ~2 minutes to descend or ascend. Some of the stations had interesting art, though the trains have seen better decades. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to try the subway system in either Baku or Yerevan - they didn’t take foreign credit cards, and metro cards were not readily purchasable.

Tbilisi had a lot of cable cars! The city is in a relatively steep river valley, and there are recreational areas on the southern hills that the cable cars reach. One goes to Narikala Fortress (an old castle) and the upper botanical garden entrance, one to Mtatsminda Amusement Park, and the third (pictured) to Turtle Lake above Vake Park.

Georgia, being one of the oldest Christian nations in the world, has a lot of churches. They are not quite as architecturally impressive - or as comprehensively decorated inside -as those of the Roman tradition, but were still interesting to visit.

A lot of Georgian churches ended up being built in spectacular locations. The Jvari Monastery near Mtskheta and Gergeti Trinity Church near Stepantsminda both certainly qualified.

The Vardzia Cave Monastery used to be almost entirely hidden within the rock before an earthquake caused the outer few meters of structure to collapse. The remains were still quite impressive, and rather better lit than they would have been in the 13th century.

The scenery was incredible.

The most famous Georgian was very similar to the best-known Austrian. Both were, among other things, genocidal warmongering dictators who gained political power in their larger northern neighbors following imprisonment for political extremism - and they both had terrible taste in mustaches. Anyways, the Soviets built a museum to Stalin before his cult really got expunged, so here’s his childhood home and his traincar.

Baku

My first stop in Baku was the Atashgah Zoroastrian Fire Temple - this used to have an eternal flame from natural gas leakage. Unfortunately, oil wells in the area reduced leakage enough for the fire to go out quite a few years ago. Since being restored they use commercial gas - but it was still a neat stop on the way from the airport to the city.

Baku has a lot of interesting architecture! Unfortunately some of it was covered up by F1 stands. The city center was very 1920s-european, with the area inside the old city walls being older and the parts outside of the immediate center either soviet-era apartment complexes or modern decorative skyscrapers.

This used to be the largest flagpole in the world - truly photos do not do it justice. The wind was incredible when I was there, and it was amazing to see just how slowly waves travelled the length of the flag.

There were a variety of interesting museums, from the National History Museum (which had a very nice tour!) inside the house of a pre-Soviet oil magnate to the Carpet Museum housed inside a giant carpet roll or the car museum in the basement of the Heydar Aliyev Center.

Baku was of course very early to the oil industry, featuring what they claim to be the world’s first industrially drilled oil well. There was a well done museum in a converted oil tanker nearby with probably the most comprehensive audio guide I’ve ever used.

The Victory Monument was a surprise to me - this is for a war fought in 2020, and there’s a very large stretch of land dedicated to it only a few blocks from parliment.

And there were of course mosques, though very few - this was honestly the least-Islamic Arabic nation I’ve visited. No call to prayer or anything else of that nature.

All in all, I was pleasantly suprised by Baku - it was more modern than I expected (in the areas I was, of course) and seemed nice. It might be a good place to see a F1 race!

Yerevan

Armenia was really pretty, and Mount Ararat is spectacular. Yerevan had an incredible number of fountains, and was pleasant to walk through - though most buildings were dramatically less attractive past the ground floor.

The Opera theater was very Soviet, and I did see a Ballet performance here.

There were many pretty musuems and monuments, including the Matenadaran (a musuem of ancient manuscripts) the Cascade Complex (a modern art museum along the sides of a very long staircase + fountain complex), the National (art) Gallery, the Armenian Genocide Memorial, and the Saint Gregory The Illuminator Cathedral.

I did a day trip to the Geghard Monastery and Garni Temple due to all the museums being closed for the May 9th holiday (WW2 victory day for the Soviets). Both were interesting, but I would pick a better tour operator if I went back.

And wherever you go near Yerevan, Mount Ararat is visible in the distance. There’s mountains in all directions, but the others aren’t nearly so prominent.

Batumi

Batumi had easily the oddest architecture I’ve seen in years. The ferris wheel in the side of a skyscraper is obvious, but the upside-down neoclassical restaurant, the modernist glass McDonalds, and more were all outrageous. It was also funny seeing extremely modern skyscrapers mixed in with decrepit Soviet-era apartment complexes.

The old center was quite pretty, with a variety of parks and statues. One notable one was of Medea of Colchis holding the golden fleece on top of a very tall pillar.

And of course there’s the Black Sea. Unfortunately, the beach is made of rock - but the views were good.

It was a long and bumpy pair of train rides. Better than taking a van, and there isn’t a convenient flight schedule, but not a great experience.