A very short guide to Tbilisi's public bathhouses
Two options for a cheap scrub in the Georgian capital
As far as I can work out there are only two places in Tbilisi where women can get the “local” bathhouse experience. Of these, only one actually has a bath.
There are dozens of choices if you’re willing to pay for a private room, but I personally prefer the communal experience, where, for a far lower entry fee, you steam alongside unknown others who happen to be in there at the time.
Divided by sex, of course; we’re not in Finland.
Tbilisi’s ancient name - Tiflis - means “warm place”. Legend has it that the city’s founder, King Vakhtang I of Iberia, chose the site after happening upon hot sulfur springs while out hunting one day in the fifth century AD.
The thermal waters that feed the baths are naturally around 40 degrees celsius, have alleged health benefits, particularly for the skin and hair, and leave the bather feeling happy, heady and ready to take on the world.
The Abanotubani district in Tbilisi’s Old Town is home to most of the capital’s historic baths - Pushkin and Lermontov themselves are said to have bathed in the iconic Chreli-Abano house. I like to imagine both literary greats leaning lazily against the building’s tiled archway entrance, probably smoking and waists wrapped in linen, skin still pink from the scalding water and blissfully ignorant that they would live little over two decades each (okay fine, Pushkin died at 37, Lemontov at 26).
Unfortunately, Chreli-Abano today is both pricey and touristy, which for me kills some of the authentic charm.
Here are my top (and only) choices for where to head for a memorable (and low cost) wash.
Lisi baths - “Luxury” option (*includes bath)
This bathhouse is actually not in the Old Town but on the southern bank of Tbilisi’s Lisi Lake, a charming spot for swimming, walking and cycling nestled in the low, yellow hills above the capital’s Delisi district.
While it is far from luxurious, Lisi baths are both reliably the perfect temperature and very rarely busy, meaning you often get the room to yourself for the mere 15 lari (4 pounds 50) it costs for an hour-long visit.
As an added bonus, no one seems to monitor what time anybody goes in or comes out, meaning I’ve often been in there well over an hour and a half with no issues.
The one downside of Lisi is that the women’s communal bath is open 8am-2pm, unlike the men’s which stays open until evening.
Still, it can be lovely to come here late morning and enjoy the bath before walking once or twice around the lake.
I find the sulfur smell far less pungent up here than down in the city, but the post-bath rush no less euphoric, if not more so as you get to exit the building to a view of green trees and blue water.
Upon entering, unless you’ve booked one of the private rooms, a grumpy receptionist will look up from her TikTok reels and jab a finger at a door behind you, the entrance to the ‘kalebis saerto darbazi’ - ‘women’s common hall’ as it is called on the Georgia language bathhouse menu, and ‘zhenski obshii zal’ on the Russian.
The women’s communal hall is not a hall, but a changing area with a single shower, toilet, and a room with a tiled bench and square bath with a sunken middle leading off it.
The space to strip off and leave belongings is furnished with dark wood chairs and a table, and this is where you sit between stints in the hot water, sipping tea sweetened with jam which a round lady in rubber slippers delivers at an extra cost.
I nearly always go to Lisi baths alone, and internally woop for joy if I enter the women’s communal hall to find it deserted, which happens a lot. It’s also nice to observer others though - friends, sisters, strangers meeting for the first time in the nude.
I once looked on as two Russian women got through a bottle of pink Prosecco and did tarot readings for each other, their hair wrapped in towels and manicured feet crossed beneath them on the wooden bench. After we got chatting I learnt from one of the pair that this outing was serving as her hen-do, while the other invited me to join throat singing sauna sessions she ran for rich immigrants from Moscow.
More recently, my friend and I met a Moldovan mother who had been brought to the bath by her daughter who lives in Tbilisi. The latter took her ‘kisi’ scrub first, lying flat on the tiled bench across from the bath as the rubber-slippered attendant peeled the top dead layer of skin off her body with a coarse glove, before sluicing her with hot bath water.
Her elderly mother went next, and was simply delighted by the results. She encouraged us to feel the smoothness of her upper arms and chest, and talked continually about how much healthier her body felt in Georgia and how she’d lost several kilos during her stay with her daughter.
While a ‘kisi’ is always nice, I personally think the cost of the one at Lisi is a bit steep for how much elbow grease the women put into it (an extra 15 lari on top of the entry fee).
If you want a real scrub then look no further than….
Sulfur Bathhouse №5 - utilitarian option (*does not include bath)
With this great bathhouse comes great injustice.
The men’s public bath here costs 10 lari (3 pounds) and, based on reports from my boyfriend, includes a large rectangular bath and searing Finnish-style sauna.
The women’s communal bit, on the other hand, costs 6 lari (just over a pound 50) and does not include a bath. Yes, I know, a bath-less bathhouse. What is left, you ask? Well, in short, a room of showers.
Bear with me here.
You go in and downstairs to the woman at the cash desk, and mutely hand over your 6 lari fare. She waves you through and you descend further to a hall with doors leading off, one of which is to the woman’s communal hall. (There are also magnificent private rooms to rent here, complete with hot and cold baths, a sauna, intricate mosaics and a big table were you can smoke and drink vodka wrapped in towels and feel like a movie star.)
The women’s communal hall has none of these things, and does not make you feel like a movie star. You head through the door and round a corner to be greeted by several women in knickers and vest tops sitting at a table and usually sharing a lunch of various Georgian dishes in tupperwares boxes. The air is thick with sulfur fumes, cigarette smoke, the smack of water on tiles and the attendants’ shouts and laughter.
Trying to look like you have a right to be there you meekly hand over your receipt showing proof of payment, and in return are directed to a free wooden locker in the changing room beyond where the women sit.
Bathhouse №5 is always busy, occasionally to the point of crowded, and I am always the youngest there by at least 40 years.
The ageing woman struggling in and out of tights and bras in the changing area always seem to glower jealously at me as I hop nimbly out of my jeans, as though they can’t believe I have the audacity to be young in their midst.
Entering the bath itself, moving figures loom through the steam, and a smell of malt vinegar mingles with the eggy sulfur. The room is round, with a domed, tiled ceiling, and eight or nine open showers that line the walls in a horseshoe shape, so that each occupant faces in.
Immediately to the left and right of the door are two low, tiled benches, each with its own hose. Female attendants bend over large nude customers lying like kings atop the surface, scrubbing for all they are worth, sweat beading on their foreheads as they work their way around each large belly and under each heavy breast.
The scrubbing gloves are squirted with vinegar and rubbed with a white soap the texture of chalk between uses.
Be warned, you are not guaranteed a ‘kisi’ here. If there are already a few people in the queue ahead of you wait times can be long, and there is only so much time you can afford to take out of your day to stand waiting in the shower.
I think I’m the only one that gets impatient though. Women 65, 70, 75 years old spend hours in here, meticulously shaving every hair from their bodies; arms, legs, armpits, bikini - one foot up on the ledge that runs around the room, elbow crooked, razor hunting in hidden crevices.
The naked old ladies jostle for the best places: the two corner showers where the ledge forms a right angle to provide the perfect perching spot and foot hold for leg shaving.
It may seem as though I’m describing a glorified shower, but there is something intriguing and magnetic about the atmosphere down here, washing side by side with unknown locals in the sulfurous belly of the city, while cars and tourists thunder overhead.
Unlike the peace of Lisi, a constant drone of voices echoes off the wet walls down here. I have frequently been reminded of a school changing room, except everyone is a pensioner.
Since I first starting frequenting №5 I’ve been asked to scrub someone’s back, been offered an apartment for rent, been asked to turn on the shower for someone who couldn’t reach the tap, and been told off for washing myself before having my ‘kisi’ (a big no-no).
On the way out of this micro-universe universe you pass several small cubicles on your left after the attendants’ picnic table. One of these I think is an atelier, while another is a tiny hair salon, with equipment, mirror and chairs jammed inside an area no bigger than a double bed, a stylist manoeuvring her scissors artfully in the centre of the clutter.
Ascending into the sunshine in the historic cradle of Tbilisi, you can’t help beaming with dreamy satisfaction, nor can you resist floating into the nearby “Crayfish, fish and beer” bar next door to complete the experience with a pint or three.