The city doesn't announce itself. There are no marquee boulevards demanding attention, no single monument that organises the rest. Instead, it reveals itself gradually — in the texture of the sulphur-stained bathhouse domes, in the way the Old Town cliffs drop straight into the river, in the particular amber of late afternoon light on the carved wooden balconies.

What makes it unusual is how many different eras coexist without apparent tension. Persian hammams next to Soviet housing blocks next to a glass pedestrian bridge lit by LEDs — and the city absorbs all of it. The Chronicle of Georgia columns stand at a reservoir outside the centre, enormous and largely unvisited, carved with a thousand years of history and left quietly to the elements.

The Caucasus is one of the world's most complicated crossroads, and this is where you begin to understand what that means on the ground.