A wild green gorge folded behind Narikala, with a waterfall at its heart and the fortress walls above. Cross the bridge and the city noise simply stops — the quietest half-hour in town.
Tucked into the gorge directly behind the Narikala fortress, hidden from the streets above, lies one of the city's best-kept secrets: a botanical garden of more than a hundred hectares, descended from the royal pleasure gardens that once belonged to the kings of Georgia.
A stream runs through the bottom of the gorge, and a path follows it past terraces of trees and flowers, over a small footbridge, to a waterfall that drops through the rock — all of it with the ancient fortress walls rising on the cliff above. Within a few minutes of leaving the crowded lanes of the Old Town, the noise simply falls away, and you have birdsong and running water instead.
It is a working scientific garden as well as a place to walk, with collections gathered from across the Caucasus and beyond, but most visitors come simply for the quiet and the green. In spring it is full of blossom; in high summer it is the coolest place in the centre.
The most atmospheric way in is from the Abanotubani side, near the sulfur baths, or down from Narikala itself. Allow an hour or two, wear shoes you can walk in, and treat it as the calm at the centre of a busy day in the Old Town.
