5 Days (Kutaisi to Tbilisi) – West, South and Centre

Gelati was medieval Georgia's Oxford: an academy founded in 1106 by King David the Builder, where philosophers translated and taught beneath golden mosaics. The great Virgin mosaic of the main church survives, one of the finest in the Caucasus, alongside layers of superb frescoes. David himself lies buried under the gateway stone, so that all who enter step over their king. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and, for many travellers, the most moving building in western Georgia.

Prometheus Cave is western Georgia's underground cathedral: 1.4 km of walkable galleries dripping with stalactites, stone curtains and calcite pools, all discreetly lit. The route ends, water level allowing, with a boat ride along a subterranean river, a rare experience anywhere in the world. The temperature is a constant 14 degrees, welcome on any summer day. It is the largest show cave in the country, and it feels like it.

In the 12th century Queen Tamar's builders carved an entire city into a cliff above the Mtkvari: thirteen floors of dwellings, chapels, refectories and wine cellars, home to thousands of monks. An earthquake later sliced the mountain open, exposing the honeycomb you climb through today. Frescoes from Georgia's golden age still glow in the rock-cut Church of the Dormition. Walking its tunnels and stairways, with swallows wheeling over the valley below, feels like entering a legend that happens to be real.

Uplistsikhe was already ancient when Christianity arrived: a whole town of halls, sanctuaries, wine cellars and a theatre cut into a sandstone ridge above the Mtkvari, inhabited from the early first millennium BC. Caravans of the Silk Road watered here, and pagan priests read fortunes in its smoke-blackened chambers. You wander freely between the caves, climbing to a basilica that crowns the rock. Sunset turns the whole hillside honey-gold.

Tbilisi layers 1,500 years of history into one walkable riverside city: Persian-style bath domes, carved wooden balconies, a Soviet avenue and a glass bridge, all beneath the Narikala fortress. Sulphur springs gave the city its name and still steam in the Abanotubani district. The cable car, the flea market, the courtyard cafes and the natural-wine bars each tell a different era. Few capitals reward simple wandering so richly.