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Feb 11, 2017
Case Studies

Tbilisi / Georgian Ropeways, Part 1.1

Post by gondola-project

Narikala Ropeway, one of Tbilisi's modern urban cable cars soaring towards the ancient Narikala Fortress. Image by Prasanna Raju.

The Narikala Ropeway — one of Tbilisi’s modern urban cable cars — soars across the Mtkvari River towards an ancient fortress. Image by Prasanna Raju.

Update February 10, 2017: As we’ve alluded to in our original post, filtering and interpreting Soviet-era information with a high degree of precision is proving to be a little more challenging than we first expected. 

To compound these difficulties, we’ve learned this week that much of the history for Georgian/Tbilisi ropeways may have been lost forever. During the tumultuous times in the 90s, the central ropeway repository along with other historical archives were subject to, how you would say, collateral damage (read: burned down). As a result, much of the data and knowledge is only available through word-of-mouth at this time. 

While this is undoubtedly terrible news, we do have some good findings to share. Thanks to reader Irakli Z’s incredible research skills, it appears that there were actually many more ropeways we didn’t list in the original article. In fact, during Soviet times, up to 10 urban ropeways (or 11 if you count one that was partially constructed) were built! 

Hopefully we can compile the data and share it online while we still can. At this time, we’ve updated the map to reflect these changes and will continue to provide findings (and hopefully not lack thereof) as it comes.  

Continue to Part 1.2 – Tbilisi State University Ropeway

Back to to Part 1.0 – Tbilisi/Georgian Ropeways



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4 Comments

  • Daniel says:

    Hello,
    Good job about the cable cars in Tbilisi! I also did some research of the old cable cars back in 2011 and made some photos. I published them on http://www.tramwayforum.at – maybe a good extent of the info written here is based on my photos, too.
    Anyway, there is also some new information to me (e.g. the cable car in Mziuri Park). One more cable car which is not on your maps is located in the centre. The top station is in Vere park, the lower station I could not identify – maybe the building was destroyed already.

    If you are interested, I can share my photos.

  • Nick Chu says:

    Hi Daniel, would love to learn more and see the photos. Perhaps send me an email and I can share/update on the blog — nick@creativeurbanprojects.com — thanks!

  • Irakli says:

    Hello, the cable car from Vere Park was never built, they started it but dropped, also the ethnograpchical museum cable car was never completed.

  • Irakli says:

    I have the new info, there was no cable car planned from Vere Park it was just city terrace not completed.

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