Chonkadze Street

All of the art nouveau district of Sololaki is worth exploring, but the most exquisite examples of fin de siècle buildings are on Chonkadze Street. Here, on what was then the edge of the city Persian princes, German investors and Georgian aristocrats competed to build the biggest, most fashionable and most downright ostentatious buildings for a thousand miles around. The “Madatov House” at number 4 is accessed by a dilapidated staircase. It reveals a half-timbered Austrian-style schloss with superb Tbilisi views. Number 11 was the Persian consulate, complete with an arched gateway straight out of Isfahan. Number 12 is the finest house in Tbilisi, a style-moderne palace that looks like something straight out of Gotham City.