Tablisi

The fabulous land” is how Alexander Pushkin described Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia since the fifth century. And staring at this defiantly lovely city, which straddles the steep banks of the Mtkvari river, One can see why. The busy heart of the bleak and mountainous region that stretches beneath Russia’s southern border, Tbilisi has positioned itself for centuries as a crossroads between Europe and Asia, and proof of its long, tumultuous, bloody history of occupation is immediately evident – among other things – in the pastel-coloured onion layers of its higgledy-piggledy architecture.