Tbilisi's very name traces back to a founding story tied to nature: according to traditional Georgian accounts, King Vakhtang Gorgasali discovered the area's hot sulfur springs in the 5th century during a hunting trip and decided to build his new capital there, naming it "Tbilisi" from the Georgian word "tbili," meaning "warm," after the thermal waters that still feed the Abanotubani baths today. These springs are not merely a poetic founding legend but an ongoing geological reality that made the site an attractive settlement across the ages.

Tbilisi's geographic position on the banks of the Mtkvari River, at the crossing point of trade routes linking the Caucasus with the Middle East and Central Asia, made it a strategic target and a civilizational crossing point for centuries. Successive waves of control passed through the city: the Persians, who founded the first Narikala fortress in the 4th century; the Arab conquest, which established the Islamic Emirate of Tbilisi lasting several centuries; then the Seljuks; the unified Georgian kingdom during its Golden Age (11th-12th centuries); then the Mongols; the Safavid Persians; and finally Russian annexation in the early 19th century.

This historical diversity has left clear architectural and cultural fingerprints visible today: Narikala Fortress itself is a living witness to these successive layers, as each subsequent ruler added an architectural layer atop the last. The Abanotubani district, with its Islamic-inspired domed bathhouses, reflects Persian and Ottoman influence. Juma Mosque in the heart of the Old Town, the only surviving mosque from what was once a much broader Islamic legacy, remains a living symbol of that era, and its unique status as a mosque shared by Sunni and Shia communities reflects Tbilisi's historic nature as a meeting point of different sects and cultures in relative peace.

Today, a visitor can walk between a centuries-old Orthodox church, a historic mosque, a Persian-style sulfur bathhouse, and an ultra-modern glass bridge, all within a relatively small stretch of the Old Town — making Tbilisi something like a living open-air museum, telling the story of East meeting West across fifteen centuries.