Rooms Tbilisi.

The tale of an abandoned Soviet-era publishing house turned trailblazing Tbilisi hotel.

Located in the Vera neighbourhood, Rooms Tbilisi occupies a Soviet-era publishing house clad in reclaimed wood.

Walking the streets of cosmopolitan Tbilisi, you’d never know how grim things were not that long ago. Get chatting with a local and they might recount the difficult years that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. To give you an idea, the fledgling nation received a mere 85,000 international visitors in 1995, compared to 9.4 million in 2019. In between was the traumatic ‘August War’, when Putin’s cronies carved off around 20% of Georgia’s internationally recognised territory.

It was against this backdrop that the achievements of Georgian hospitality group, Adjara, were all the more extraordinary. After the war, in 2010, Adjara’s founder Temur Ugulava opened his first hotel in Tbilisi. It was a franchise of the Holiday Inn—not glamorous but familiar, to create trust at a time when few people were visiting the city. At his next hotel, though, things became more interesting.

Falling for an abandoned Soviet sanatorium in the Caucasus Mountains, Ugulava found the ideal passion project to showcase Georgia. The alpine retreat was given a top-to-toe overhaul and opened as the dazzling Rooms Kazbegi in 2012. It was a seminal moment for the Georgian hospitality sector, launching the Rooms brand.

In-house restaurant The Kitchen at Rooms Hotel Tbilisi.

When Rooms Tbilisi opened two years later, it not only cemented Ugulava’s talent for revitalising forgotten Soviet buildings but set the city on a trajectory of cultured cool. Today, Tbilisi is touted ‘the Paris of the Caucusus’ or ‘the new Berlin’. In some ways it outshines both. Alongside the city’s tolerant spirit and burgeoning art scene, it comes with many millennia of extraordinary history—the birthplace of wine 8,000 years ago for starters. Rooms has been a big part of the recent journey, leading the city’s cultural renaissance since opening its handsome doors.

The hotel spans eight floors of a Soviet-era publishing house in the leafy Vera neighbourhood. It’s a hop up the hill to some of the city’s cutest cafes, restaurants and wine bars, or a skip down Rustaveli Avenue to the National Gallery, the Georgian National Museum and the Zurab Tsereteli Museum of Modern Art. Tbilisi Old Town lies just beyond, a jumble of silk-road pretty houses climbing a steep hill, the 4th-century Narikala Fortress as its crown.

Bookshelves in the entrance of Rooms Tbilisi, housed in a former Soviet publishing house in the Vera neighbourhood.
The Bar, Rooms Tbilisi.
A large stone fireplace anchors the main loung of Room Tbilisi, a boutique hotel in Vera.

Rooms’ interiors are a modern, Georgian take on 1930’s New York, and at the same time sufficiently rich and textured for a land that had its heyday in the Middle Ages. It’s a place to linger, a mix of high ceilings, industrial windows, richly patterned tiles, aged leather and jewel-hued fabrics. Eclectic design shifts between rustic and opulent—provincial farmhouse tables in one corner, velvet portieres and patterned wallpaper in another, a romantic dash of Mitteleuropa —alongside Edwardian armchairs, sexy low-slung sofas and splashes of mid-century modern. Rough-hewn timber walls, floors and ceilings bring it all together, a nod to the alpine spirit of the original Kazbegi hotel.

Rooms Tbilisi not only cemented Ugulava’s talent for revitalising forgotten Soviet buildings, it set the city on a trajectory of cultured cool.

A beautiful antique desk and contemporary art in the Terrace Suite at Rooms Tbilisi boutique hotel.

125 guest rooms overlook Chovelidze Street or a striking courtyard garden. Even the smallest Urban Queen room (22m2) comes with a proper writing table. Many are clad in rich, Fortuny-esque wallpapers custom made for the hotel, alongside wide-plank wooden floors, leather headboards and wheel chandeliers. Signature King and Terrace King rooms (32-34m2) feature claw-foot soaking tubs, while the Terrace Suite (97m2) comes with a separate living room, study with a fabulous antique desk, punchy contemporary art and a terrace running the length of the suite. All rooms have Marshall speakers, rain showers and luxurious Prija products (vegan friendly) in refillable dispensers.

Cosy guest rooms with hand-printed wallpaper at Rooms Tbilisi.
Bathrooms recall New York in the 1930's at Rooms Tbilisi, Georgia's first boutique hotel.
Claw-foot bath tubs in many of the guest rooms of boutique hotel, Rooms Tbilisi.
The industrial facade of Rooms Tbilisi, a boutique hotel set within a former Soviet publishing house.
The Kitchen serves hyper-local farm-to-table food in a relaxed and elegant setting.

A series of warm and intimate spaces give Rooms’ ground floor a club-like feel, a glass atrium overlooking the courtyard and Garden Bar. The main lounge is anchored by a massive stone fireplace with low-slung sofas, velvet portieres and walls in deep ochre, terracotta in the adjacent Library and Bar Room and a dusty take on forest green in Rooms’ excellent in-house restaurant just beyond. Under the watchful eye of executive chef Levan Buadze, The Kitchen does farm-to-table comfort food day and night. Think Tomato Chowder, Cacio e Peppe and Beef Bourguignon‚ with a decent wine list of Georgian and international drops and a fitness centre to work it all off.

There’s no Khinkali on the menu—the scrumptious liquid-filled dumplings Georgia is famous for—as Ugulava wants guests to support local restaurants. After all, you can’t experience a city from the confines of a hotel, although at Rooms Tbilisi you come close.

Book your stay at Rooms Tbilisi. Urban Queen rooms from USD 90 + VAT.

Photography ℅ Rooms Tbilisi.

In-house restaurant The Kitchen at Rooms Hotel, Tbilisi, Georgia.