Open Air Museum of Ethnography

The open air museum of folk architecture and everyday life was founded in 1966 by the ethnographer Giorgi Chitaia. It covers a hill above the Vake district next to Turtle Lake and brings together around seventy houses and buildings from every part of Georgia. The gallery shows a Svan tower above the city, an eastern Georgian darbazi house with a carved central pillar, wooden oda houses of western Georgia on brick piers, stone farmhouses with old cart wheels, an ancient basilica, a dolmen in the woods and the monument to Chitaia. Interiors show daily life: a hearth with a cauldron, clay jugs, wooden churns, a tahta bench with kilims, a cradle and a khurjin saddlebag.

Carved central pillar and stone wall niches with clay jugs in a darbazi house

Carved wooden columns and a kilim covered tahta bench in a traditional Georgian house

Carved wardrobe and kilim rugs in a traditional wooden house room of a museum

Two levels of finely carved wooden galleries inside a traditional house at an ethnographic museum

Open hearth with an iron cauldron and clay jugs in a traditional Georgian house interior

Kitchen corner with hanging gourds, baskets and clay jugs in a museum house

Wooden oda house on brick piers with a carved veranda, Tbilisi open air museum

Wooden barn with a red tiled roof among cedars at the Tbilisi ethnographic museum

Wooden house with a long veranda on a stone base, Tbilisi open air museum

Traditional wooden oda house with a carved arcade at the open air museum in Tbilisi

Wooden house interior with rows of clay jars at an open air ethnographic museum

Wooden house interior with kilim rugs, a carved cupboard and old household vessels

Bronze sculpture of a seated couple on the grounds of Tbilisi Ethnography Museum

Wooden house with a carved balustrade veranda at the Tbilisi Ethnography Museum

Megalithic dolmen with a round portal hole among trees at Tbilisi Ethnography Museum

Old stone church building at the Tbilisi Ethnography Museum with the city beyond

Stone farmhouse with old cart wheels along a paved path at Tbilisi Ethnography Museum

Two storey house with stone base and wooden gallery at Tbilisi Ethnography Museum

Traditional wooden houses on a dry meadow at the Tbilisi Open Air Ethnography Museum

Monument to Giorgi Chitaia, founder of Georgian ethnology, at the Tbilisi Ethnography Museum

Antique chest of drawers with mirrors and a bentwood chair in a house museum

Traditional room with a red kilim on the wall, tahta bench and wooden cradle

Stone wall niches with pottery above a kilim covered tahta bed with sheepskin