Best Museums in Tbilisi Georgia – Your Ultimate List

Monday, August 09, 2021 Sightseeing and Landmarks by Ani

Tbilisi is a very diverse city in terms of culture, traditions, and history. It can offer numerous authentic places for visiting for history geeks, culture explorers, or simply curious travelers. Of course, the best way to explore the country and its legacy is to travel around various regions of Georgia and experience the remains of antiquity in real-life experience. However, if you are short on time or want to get the best out of the country’s past, present, and future in a single go the museums are the best options. You can easily find both centuries-old museums and contemporary, modern ones standing almost next to each other in Tbilisi. We will cover the top museums in Tbilisi Georgia along with the description of what you will see and experience while visiting each of them.

Georgian National Museum

Georgian National Museum is located on the central avenue of the city – Shota Rustavelu ave. 3. It was established in 2006 and is one of the most extensive historical museums in the country. The quantity of stored items within the museum exceeds 3000.  You can view various items collected from the Security Service archive during the Soviet occupation (1921-1991), photo materials, installations, many interesting, authentic, and significant documents, objects collected from archives of different families, etc. You can find all the historical records and illustrations that come from the period where Georgia was fighting for its independence.

The museum works from 10 am to 6 pm every day except for Monday. It costs 10 GEL to get an entrance ticket and if you would like to get an English guided tour, the price will be 45 GEL. There are numerous exhibitions from time to time and the information regarding them can be found on the official website of the Georgian National Museum. Visiting Georgian National Museum is definitely one of the best things you can do in Tbilisi.

Art Museum of Georgia

The Art Museum of Georgia is often referred to as Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts, which is located in Tbilisi in the central district. It can be found near Freedom Square. The museum displays over 14,000 artworks coming from Georgian, Russian, and European artists. The museum operates since 1923 and it began with small art collections. It contains very famous and renowned artworks like “The Procuress”, a 16th-century painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, numerous Persian fine arts such as Qajar art, various manuscripts, metalwork, jewelry, and paintings.  The building of the museum itself is also very interesting – built-in neoclassic style back in 1838. During the Imperial Russian epoch, the building had a different purpose and represented a theological seminary.

The Museum of Fine Arts is open from Tuesday to Sunday between 11 am and 5 pm. The entrance ticket price is 3 GEL for adults, 0.5 GEL for students, and 0.5 GEL for minors. The museum also hosts various exhibitions of both local and international artists from time to time. The schedule is in advance available on the official website of the museum.

Museum of Illusions Tbilisi

The museum of Illusions is a modern establishment that recently emerged in Tbilisi Georgia. The inspiration comes from the same concept museum in Zagreb, Croatia which had grown in popularity among visitors of all ages. Tbilisi Museum of Illusions offers a highly unusual experience, lots of laughs, and amazing material for your social media feed photos. This literally mind-bending place contains three stories with each floor demonstrating its own theme and interactive puzzles. You can find Clone Table with five copies of yourself, Chair Illusion Room completely destroying your perception of objects sizes within the room, the Vortex Tunnel creating an illusion of a rotation cylinder, and many other amusements like Inifinity Tunnels, Kaleidoscope Hollow Face Illusion, Anti-Gravity Room, etc.

The museum is located on Betlemi Street in Tbilisi and operates from Tuesday to Friday between 4 pm and 10 pm, while on Weekends you can visit the museum from 1 pm to 10 pm. The museum is closed on Mondays. The Illusion museum Tbilisi ticket price is 19.5 GEL for adults, 12.5 GEL for children, 14.5 GEL for students, and 47 GEL for a family package that includes parents and a child.

Open Air Museum of Ethnography

One of the must-visit attractions of Tbilisi is the Open Air Museum of Ethnography offering more than 8000 artifacts collected from various regions of Georgia. The Open Air Museum demonstrates the cultural, traditional, architectural, and historical values of 14 different ethnographic zones of Georgia. The museum was established in 1966 and occupies over 52 hectares of land. Along with the exterior and interior or multiple architectural monuments of each ethnographic zone, the visitors can see various kinds of tools, textiles, and ceramics, whereas some of them date back to the 5th century. There are numerous guided tours available on-site together with folk exhibitions and festivals held several times throughout the year. The place also features a quaint Georgian restaurant that provides the most delicious local cuisine in the city.

The museum is located in Vake District near “Turtle Lake”. It is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm. The entrance ticket price of the Tbilisi Open Air Museum of Ethnography is 5 GEL per adult, 0.5 GEL per student, and 0.5 GEL per school pupil. Special exhibitions and festivals held on the museum territory might require additional charges depending on the size and purpose of the event.

Tbilisi National Gallery

The Georgian National Gallery dates back to 1920.  The gallery has been one of the major contributors to the development of Georgian fine arts. Previously, the purpose of the building was to serve as a military and historic museum under the Russian Empire, known as the Temple of Glory. The museum was re-established in 1920. Since then, it has been a house to some of the most significant artistic movements in the city. You will find numerous Georgian School artworks, as well as the paintings of Russian, Western European, Iranian and contemporary artists. The gallery has eight exhibition halls, a restoration laboratory, several training areas, a gift shop, and temporary exhibit reserves. The interior design has been refurbished by the Portuguese company Ainda Arquitectura.

The National Gallery of Tbilisi is another significant museum on Rustaveli avenue. The gallery is open from Tuesday through Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm. The Tbilisi National Gallery ticket price for adults is 12 GEL, 0.5 GEL for students, and 0.5 GEL for school pupils.