This is where Tbilisi keeps its memory. The Old Town spills down from Narikala in a tangle of lanes too narrow and too old to have been planned, where carved wooden balconies lean out over courtyards and the paint is peeling in exactly the right way.
In the space of a few minutes' walk you pass a sixth-century basilica, a domed mosque, a synagogue, and an Armenian church, all of them within sight of one another — a small, stubborn lesson in how this city has always lived. Around Meidan Square and along the river the old caravanserais now hold wine bars and antique shops, and the smell of fresh bread finds you from doorways you can't quite locate.
Wander without a plan. Follow the sound of a piano from an open window, take the stairs that look private but aren't, lose the map. The point of the Old Town is not any single monument but the texture of the whole — the leaning houses, the grapevines on the balconies, the cats asleep on warm stone.
Come late in the afternoon, when the low sun turns the brick honey-coloured and the lanes empty of tour groups. Find a courtyard, order a glass of amber wine, and let the evening arrive.
