View from Tbilisi

摘要

Tbilisi, capital of Georgia (a newly independent country in the Caucasus, formerly a southern republic of the USSR) is over 1500 years old. Its name is translated as 'hot springs': the legend goes that while hunting Vachtang Gorgasali, the King of Iberia (in the fifth century, eastern Georgia), killed a pheasant which fell into the hot Lake Lisi and was promptly cooked. Today Tbilisi is a large city with over 1.2 million inhabitants a quarter of the entire Georgian population. The city, on the shoulders of surrounding hills, stretches along Mtkvari River. Over the centuries its basic linear plan was enriched by the wings of residential quarters. The city's average altitude is 450m above sea level (the nearest, the Black Sea, is some 300km west of Tbilisi). The climate is generally mild continental very much as in the rest of southeastern Europe. Winters rarely bring snow and below zero temperatures while summers sometimes go well above 30 degrees Celsius.