Tbilisi, Georgia

CREDIT: EYESWIDEOPEN/GETTY IMAGES

This city’s creative groundswell has been building for a few years now, with young designers, chefs, architects, and artists — many of whom never knew life under the USSR — lending a palpable energy to the place. Georgian design, its profile boosted by Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia, is on full display at the city’s surfeit of concept stores — find many of them, such as clothing atelier Flying Painter, at the mixed-use development Fabrika, which occupies a Soviet-era clothing factory. And “new Georgian” cuisine is finding its footing as young chefs bring traditional foods into the 21st century, with a glut of wine bars and standout restaurants like Shavi Lomi, Keto and Kote, and Kharcho (located inside a new creative hub and workspace called Art House). There are also an outsize number of excellent hotels for a city so small. Fabrika houses a colorful hostel, the brainchild of Adjara Group, also responsible for the trendy Rooms Hotels and the soaring, sensual Stamba, opened in 2018 inside an old Soviet printing factory. Next year, Stamba will expand its photography museum, which displays work by Georgian artists. Others followed in Adjara Group’s wake, with the opening of several small properties including a Moxy and the colorful City Wine Hotel, an offshoot of favorite wine bar g.Vino. If all goes according to plan, 2020 will see the opening of a Kempinski in Tbilisi — a gleaming, glass complex on Mount Mtatsminda that will shout to the world that Tbilisi has arrived. —Hannah Walhout