- Shawn Basey
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
Mtatsminda Park is a high-altitude collision of Soviet-era remnants, bizarre carnival kitsch, and the best views in Tbilisi. Bring your camera for both absurd and epic views, your appetite for a deep-fried pastry, and your patience for the funicular pricing. One the better things to do in Tbilisi if you’ve got a kid, and without a doubt, the best view in the city.
I was up at GITA, Georgia’s Innovation and Technology Agency, for a meeting with the European Business Association, wondering if my friends money could find some source of sweet cash. There’s apparently some kind of European Union funding for innovative products that Georgians have access to, but they need to be fairly far along and super organized to get that. And given the government’s current fixation on Foreign Agents, I’m not entirely sure how that works, since by default, any innovative Georgian who might get access to free capital would then be considered under the influence of the EU, no?
Maybe I’m wrong on that one. Would love some clarification. No one there seemed to know.
Such is life in Georgia these days.
Need to Know
The Funicular: It’s 100 years old and has outlived every regime that tried to own it. The line to get up is long, soul-crushing, and totally normal.
The Ponchiki: These deep-fried, custard-filled pastries are a Soviet-era necessity. If you don't eat at least two, were you even there?
The History: This "Holy Mountain" was once the stomping ground of ascetics living in caves—until the Soviet elite decided they preferred dachas and amusement parks.
The Strategy: Ride the funicular up to get the photo, then walk down the mountain to find the actual city.
Anyways, GITA has a fairly nice meeting facility. We occupied the one of the top rooms and the presentation layout was pretty great. I don’t think the campus is that big, but for smaller functions like the one we were having it was perfect. It’s only getting there that is a bit of a hassle. On Google maps, it’s listed as “Tech Park Georgia”, though Georgians will tell you GITA. Either you can drive/take a taxi, or take a bus, or do what I tried to do, take the funicular or gondola to Mtatsminda Park and walk 15 minutes (or taxi or bus).
I wanted to avoid a ride on the morning commute, packed in by hundreds of sweating students and bureaucrats on a collapsing metro system. Seriously, in Vake… it’s not that I don’t appreciate the upgrade on Chavchavadze. They took away one driving lane on each side, added a bus lane, and put the bus pickups in the middle. The whole thing looks like there could be tram there. But then they forgot to add busses. So of course, you take away car access, prioritize busses, and this all in turn increases the amount of people who would ride the bus.
But then…
You forget to add the busses. Come guys.
So to get past the transit trap, I decided to take an interesting route. Since GITA is a bit outside of the city, just up the street from Mtatsminda Park, I decided to take a trip up the new gondola at Rustaveli.
Except it didn’t function until 11:00 AM. I thought it would be open with the waking hours (because what a cool way to commute to work if you lived up there!) but no. I looked down to check Google Maps, to see if my Georgian was correct. Google Maps said 10. Well, someone was off. I wasn’t quite sure whether my 11:00 AM understanding was correct, or whoever wrote the Business Profile on Google Maps was (by the way, if you need help with that, contact me).
I turned back to catch the bus to GITA, but just missed that bus. I jumped on the metro, sped through the underground rollercoaster, and was able to catch the bus at Freedom Square. The views going up on the bus were pretty amazing. I got off at GITA, but it is possible to take it all the way up to Mtatsminda if you would rather a bus.
From Mtatsminda to Amusement Kitsch
Before the Ferris wheel and the mirror mazes, this was "Holy Mountain." It was a sanctuary for one of the “13 Assyrian Fathers”, who carved out a spiritual life in caves across the land back in the 6th century. Many of the holiest monasteries in the country are attributed to this collection of monks who came to preach the gospel, and there might have been more than 13. Some people believe they were actual Assyrians, others believe they were Georgians who studied in Assyria, but that’s besides the point.
One of the Assyrian Fathers, St. Davit Garejeli, was believed to have stayed in a cave on the side of the mountain overlooking the 6th century castle city, far outside the city gates of the time. He later moved on to found Davit Gareja in the desert mountains bordering Azerbaijan. But because he stayed in the cave there, the mountain became known as “Holy Mountain”, or Mtatsminda, and they built a church there, St. Davit, and a graveyard, as you do.
You can get there by taking the funicular and stopping at the middle stop. If you don’t know it’s there, the middle stop just seems like an oddity, a place to get off for an adventurous hike or something.
Then came the Soviet era, which brought summer dachas for the Party elite—including the brutal architect of the NKVD and Tbilisi’s grand redesigner of Tbilisi into a “modern” city, Lavrentiy Beria. His dacha is a ruin now, a gritty reminder that even the most powerful monsters eventually lose their real estate to time and neglect. I hear it’s a beautiful building though.
An Amusement Park in Tbilisi
Now, Mtatsminda Park is unapologetically, wildly kitschy. It’s filled with rides that look like they’ve seen better days and wax figures that probably haunt the park after closing. There’s no clear theme to it, though there was a modest attempt to make it “Georgian folksy” or “Soviet Georgian folksy” or something, it’s hard to tell.
First built in the 1930s by the Soviets, it has that weird “dead kid Communist” feeling that Soviet parks often have. I say “dead” because there’s always a ghost-town kind of sense of abandonment, even when they’re full up. They’re interesting to go to, especially in juxtaposition to the uber-Capitalist American versions like Six Flags or Disney World. But don’t expect anything remotely similar. They’ve got like one rollercoaster (“American mountain”) and a haunted car ride.
In 2001, a local oligarch, Badri Patarkatsishvili, bought the place and attempted to modernize it. But ended up making it even more of a hodge podge place bringing in random second-hand carnival gear. I’ll write more about this interesting guy in the next blog, but he’s also the guy behind the famous, brutalist phallus building, the Wedding Palace.
Badri had a falling out with then president Saakashvili, and died under mysterious circumstances in 2008. Just after, Saakashvili’s government swiped up the property. After lengthy court proceedings, they returned it tot he family though, under whose control it remains.
It’s a great place to hit up if you have a kid, and maybe to enjoy a beer with a view, but otherwise probably not on the “must-see” list for Tbilisi. I mean, the gondola is cool and it’s probably the best view, but there’s a huge caveat there. Read on.
Eating at Mtatsminda
At the building I like to refer to as the Georgian Parthenon, which is propped at the top of the mountain and, well, looks like a Soviet take on the Parthenon, there is a dessert restaurant. They serve, allegedly, the best ponchiki in the city.
What’s a ponchiki, you ask?
This was the USSR’s answer to the decadent, icing-topped bourgeois donut. The ponchiki is simple, proletarian, and deep-fried; filled with some gooey sugar substance. Eat them while they’re hot and don’t worry about the calorie count. You’re not in Georgia to diet.
If you want something heavier to eat, there’s no reason to waste your wad on the restaurants at the funicular station. Just go there for the ponchiki. There’s a fast food court underneath the big radio tour.
And while I mention the radio tower, no, there’s no restaurant up there. It’s just one of those big so-ugly-it’s-iconic radio towers that Communists loved to build. They got ‘em everywhere with hugely different looks, from here, to Moscow, to Riga, to Prague. This one looks so much like the Eiffel Tower that my kid refers to it as the “Tbilisi Eiffel Tower”. As I’m sure many kids do.
The Funicular and Cable Car
These are technically part of the park, and thus, not integrated with the metro card. You’ll have to buy a dedicated Mtatsminda Card at the kiosk, and you can charge that card up to also use on all the rides and attractions (but not the food).
There’s something funky that goes on with the fees here, that I haven’t really worked out. But I’ll put it like this, if you’re a foreigner going to ride up, you’ll get charged 12 GEL one-way per person, plus 2 GEL for the card. But if you’re a Georgian or Georgian resident, it’s just 3 GEL for a ride. I went up to the window and paid for the three of us some 45 GEL, and then my wife realized how absurd that was and went up to yell at them. Telling them two of us are Georgian and one of us a resident, we were refunded 36 GEL. Nutso.
So if you’re going up there… go with a Georgian and let them pay for the ride. Buy them a beer up top.
The Walk Down
If you’re feeling a bit adventurous, you could walk down. There’s a trail that begins next to the gondola station. It takes a bunch of narrow switchbacks almost straight down, and then spits you out on Kakabadze Street, so still a hike down to Rustaveli from there, but from there it’s all pavement. You could alternative veer left and head to Barnovi Street in Vera, where there’s lot of little cafes and restaurants squeezed between crumbling Soviet blocks and modern ant towers.
Need more grit for your trip?
