There is a legend as to how the city was founded: ‘In Mtskheta, King Vakhtang let his hawk loose one day and it chased after a pheasant. The King waited. He could not see the hawk, nor the pheasant. He followed the path that the hawk had taken down the valley. At the bottom of the valley flowed steaming waters, the colour of sulphur. The pheasant had drowned and the hawk sat above. Enchanted with the source of the hot waters, the King founded Tbilisi in the valley’ (‘Tbili’ means warm in Georgian).
Such is the mythology of foundation of the city. Who knows how it really happened? But Tbilisi was also strategic site for one of the fortresses guarding the southern approach to the ancient capital of Mtskheta.
In the inner courtyards of Tbilisi, Azeris rubbed shoulders with Armenians and Jews. In the markets Kurds traded with Georgians and Turks. It is difficult to find another city where an Orthodox church, a Sinagogue, a Mosque and a Roman Catholic Church are built in the same quarter.
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