Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel

The Iveria opened in 1967 as the grand hotel of Soviet Georgia, and for a time it was the tallest building in Tbilisi, the showpiece hotel of the Georgian republic. After war broke out in Abkhazia in 1992 it became a shelter for displaced families, and more than eight hundred refugees lived in its rooms for over a decade, in the middle of the capital.

In 2004 the last residents left, each room settled with a payment, and the Silkroad Group stripped the tower back to its steel frame. The Berlin architects Graft redrew it as a modern business hotel. It reopened in 2009 under the Radisson Blu name, the brand's first hotel in Georgia, still eighteen floors high above First Republic Square, now with 236 rooms and suites.

• The rooftop pool An infinity pool on the eighteenth floor, with the old town and the hills around Tbilisi laid out below. Indoor and outdoor pools sit lower down.
• Anne Semonin Spa The French skincare house runs the spa, which the hotel put at 1,600 square metres over the top two floors when it marked ten years.
• On the square Rustaveli Avenue starts at the door, and the old town is a walk downhill.