Tbilisi Bunkers: Exploring a Soviet Underground

Updated September 2026, Tbilisi Bunkers: Exploring a Soviet Underground was originally published in November 2023

A hidden network of Soviet-era bunkers, bomb shelters, tunnels, and underground chambers lies beneath Tbilisi, Georgia. While much of this subterranean world remains abandoned or inaccessible, a small number of sites can be explored legally with a guide.

I’d known about the Soviet bunkers beneath Tbilisi for years. I’d also heard about the city’s “diggers,” the urban explorers who had spent years finding and documenting the underground spaces hidden beneath the capital.

So when I returned to Georgia, I decided it was finally time to go underground myself.

After some searching, I found Tornike Kapanadze, a local digger who runs tours of a Soviet-era bunker in Tbilisi. A few messages later, we had arranged a visit.

What followed was one of the strangest history experiences I’ve had in Georgia: stepping through an ordinary-looking doorway and descending into a Cold War bunker hidden beneath the city.

If you’re looking for Tbilisi bunkers you can actually visit, I’ve included information about the bunker tour, how to arrange a visit, what you’ll see underground, and what I learned about Tbilisi’s hidden Soviet underworld below.

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Tbilisi Bunkers at a Glance

Can you visit the Tbilisi bunkers?
Yes. A small number of Soviet-era bunkers can be visited legally with a guide. Most abandoned bunkers and tunnels are not open to the public.

How many bunkers are under Tbilisi?
Sources commonly cite around 400 to 450 Soviet-era bunkers and shelters beneath Tbilisi, although the exact number is difficult to verify.

Can you visit the Tbilisi bunkers without a guide?
I wouldn’t recommend it. Many underground sites are abandoned, damaged, flooded, or otherwise unsafe, and some require permission to enter.

Is there a Tbilisi bunker tour?
Yes. There are currently guided Soviet bunker and urbex tours operating in Tbilisi, including tours of preserved Cold War-era bunkers.

What will you see?
Depending on the tour, expect underground rooms, blast doors, communications equipment, ventilation systems, generators, maps, and other remnants of Soviet civil defense infrastructure.

History of Tbilisi’s Underground World

Tbilisi’s underground history stretches back centuries, long before the city’s Soviet bunkers and Cold War bomb shelters appeared.

The capital has been repeatedly attacked and rebuilt throughout its history, leaving behind a surprisingly extensive subterranean world beneath the streets. Today, Tbilisi’s underground includes everything from ancient cellars and sulfur baths to Soviet tunnels, bomb shelters, and bunkers.

So when you start looking into Tbilisi bunkers, you’re really stepping into just one chapter of a much larger underground history.

Tbilisi’s Underground Old City

Tbilisi was sacked by the Persians, Khwarezmians, Ummyads, and others 27 times which drove residents to go underground, and in 1795 during the notorious Battle of Krtsanisi, the city was burned to the ground and razed. This repeated cycle of destruction helped shape the city’s unusual underground architecture. Beneath the Old City are layers of cellars, passages, caravanserais, bazaars, sulfur baths, and other subterranean spaces.

Some of this underground world is easy to visit. You can explore parts of it around the Meidan Bazaar, Abanotubani’s sulfur baths, the Tbilisi Wine Museum, and various restaurants and bars in the Old City.

These spaces aren’t Soviet bunkers, but they provide useful context for understanding why underground Tbilisi is such a fascinating part of the city.

Stalin’s Underground Printing Press in Tbilisi

Fast-forward to the early 20th century, when a young Iosif Djugashvili, who would later become Joseph Stalin, was involved with a secret Bolshevik printing operation beneath a house at #7 Kaspi Street in Tbilisi’s Avlabari District.

The underground printing press produced Bolshevik propaganda, including newspapers, pamphlets, and flyers in Georgian, Armenian, and Russian. The printing equipment was reportedly smuggled into Georgia from Germany in pieces and assembled underground.

Police discovered the printing press in 1906, after which the well leading to the chamber was filled and the site was destroyed. During the Soviet period, the underground chamber was restored.

Today, Stalin’s Underground Printing Press Museum gives visitors a chance to descend into the chamber and see this unusual piece of Tbilisi’s revolutionary history.

Tbilisi’s Soviet Bunkers: The Underground City

The Soviet bunkers beneath Tbilisi are the real reason I came looking underground.

During the Soviet period, Tbilisi developed an extensive network of underground shelters, tunnels, communications facilities, and other civil-defense structures. Many were designed to protect people and maintain essential infrastructure in the event of war, including a nuclear attack.

Sources commonly estimate that around 400 to 450 bunkers and bomb shelters exist beneath Tbilisi. Because much of the network was secret and many sites have been abandoned or altered, the exact number is difficult to establish.

The story becomes murkier when you get into the older tunnels associated with Lavrentiy Beria, the Georgian-born Soviet official who headed the Georgian Communist Party during the 1930s and later under Stalin, the NKVD.

During Beria’s time as the head of the Georgian Communist Party, he was tasked with developing a sewage system for Tbilisi and this is where one begins to find the traces of his secret project.

Due to the top-secret nature of Beria’s Soviet-era bunker system in Tbilisi, there is no evidence of them found in state archives, not even a map. 

Some researchers and urban explorers believe parts of the network may have been used to move prisoners or bodies during the Stalinist purges. Other theories suggest the tunnels served security or emergency purposes. The problem is that surviving archival evidence is limited, so it’s important to separate what is documented from what has become part of Tbilisi’s underground folklore.

The Cold War brought another wave of construction. Across the Soviet Union, major cities developed civil-defense infrastructure designed to protect civilians from conventional bombing and nuclear attack. Tbilisi was no exception.

And that’s how the city ended up with an underground world that feels almost like a second Tbilisi.

Tbilisi Metro: Another Layer of the Underground City

Tbilisi’s underground history isn’t limited to bunkers and secret tunnels. The Tbilisi Metro became another major part of the city’s subterranean infrastructure when the system opened in 1966.

Like other major Soviet cities, such as Baku and Tashkent, Tbilisi’s metro stations were designed with civil-defense considerations in mind. Today, riding the metro gives visitors a very ordinary way to experience another layer of the underground city.

The contrast is pretty wild: one minute you’re standing on a busy Tbilisi street, and the next you’re ears are popping on descent deep underground into a piece of Soviet infrastructure.

What Happened to Tbilisi’s Soviet Bunkers After 1991?

When Georgia gained independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, much of Tbilisi’s underground civil-defense infrastructure lost its original purpose.

Many bunkers were abandoned, looted, damaged, or simply forgotten. Some were privatized or repurposed, while others remain sealed and inaccessible.

That helped create the strange situation Tbilisi has today: an enormous Soviet underground network exists beneath a modern capital, but much of it is invisible from street level.

The abandoned sites eventually attracted a community of urban explorers known locally as diggers, who began documenting parts of this forgotten underground world.

Tbilisi’s Diggers: Exploring the Soviet Underground

Urban exploration, or urbex, became increasingly popular across the former Soviet Union after the collapse of the USSR. Tbilisi developed its own community of “diggers,” urban explorers who search for and document abandoned underground spaces.

These explorers have helped uncover parts of Tbilisi’s forgotten network of bunkers, tunnels, shelters, and other Soviet-era structures.

But exploring them isn’t the same as visiting an abandoned building above ground. Some underground sites are unstable, flooded, poorly ventilated, or otherwise dangerous.

Which brings me to the important part: how can you actually visit a Tbilisi bunker?

Tbilisi Bunker Tour: How to Visit a Soviet Bunker

If you want to see a Soviet bunker in Tbilisi, the safest option is to join a guided tour rather than attempting to explore abandoned sites yourself.

When I visited, my tour was led by Tornike Kapanadze, a local digger who has worked to make some of Tbilisi’s underground sites accessible to visitors.

Tornike offers both one hour tours of the bunkers, as well as three hour long Tbilisi bunker tours.

The bunker I visited was around 10 meters underground and is believed to date from the 1950s. It was designed as a functioning civil-defense facility, with systems for electricity, communications, water, ventilation, and emergency operations.

Tornike also went on to explain that many of these bunkers were designed by Pavle Groves, a Russian engineer and Soviet prisoner. The bunkers were constructed by German prisoners as laborers, most of them on a death sentence, and therefore unable to spread the existence of these bunkers to the outside world.

What You See Inside the Tbilisi Soviet Bunker

This bunker, in particular, features several rooms- all of which served an important purpose.

Just behind the entrance doors, a hallway leads to a sealed room where a person tasked with going above ground to bring food, water, and supplies down during an attack would be disinfected to prevent the introduction of disease or poison to the bunker.

Continuing further inside, a diesel generator used to supply the bunker with electricity is on display, a rare find considering the generators scattered about the bunker system in Tbilisi were looted out in the 90s. The room also features a ventilation system that would have brought fresh air inside.

In another room, a communications board is still in place that was used to communicate with other bunkers in Tbilisi, as well as other parts of Georgia and other parts of the USSR. Along with the communication board are lists of names and home numbers of workers in the bunker, numbers of other bunkers, and phone numbers of governmental organizations. 

Another interesting room in the bunker is a conference room that features wooden desks and chairs, a map, and a painting of Stalin.

Finally, my favorite room of the bunker was the first aid room, where workers could be treated for a variety of ailments on-site. 

The bunker tour lasts 30-60 minutes, depending on how many questions you have for Tornike. He knows the bunkers and their little-known history quite well. Prices run about 95 GEL per person, to which the fee goes towards maintaining the bunker and clean up of others.

How to Visit the Tbilisi Soviet Bunkers

The easiest way to visit a Tbilisi bunker is to arrange a guided tour in advance.

I originally contacted Tornike through his Facebook page to arrange my visit. The exact meeting point was provided after arranging the tour, rather than being publicly advertised as the entrance to a bunker.

Today there are also bookable guided Tbilisi Soviet bunker tours listed online, including tours of preserved Cold War-era bunkers. Current listings describe experiences lasting roughly one to one and a half hours.

Do not try to enter abandoned Tbilisi bunkers on your own. Many are damaged, flooded, unstable, or otherwise unsafe, and some require permission to access.

Wear comfortable shoes and clothing that you don’t mind getting dirty. Underground temperatures can also be noticeably cooler than outside.

Bonus: Telatgori Water Reservoir

If you’re interested in further Tbilisi urbex, there’s another unusual site worth knowing about: the abandoned Telatgori Water Reservoir.

It isn’t a Soviet bunker, though. Instead, this abandoned infrastructure site offers another glimpse into Tbilisi’s subterranean and Soviet-era history.

The reservoir is located behind the abandoned Archaeology Museum.

What to Bring on a Tbilisi Bunker Tour

You don’t need a huge amount of gear for a guided bunker tour, but I’d recommend:

• A headlamp or torch
• Comfortable closed-toe shoes
• A light jacket or warm layer
• A phone or camera
• A small amount of water
• Clothes you don’t mind getting dusty

Your guide should provide any specialist equipment needed for the tour.

Are the Tbilisi Bunkers Safe to Visit?

The legal guided bunker tours are very different from exploring abandoned bunkers on your own.

Much of Tbilisi’s underground network is abandoned, and some sites have structural damage, stagnant water, poor ventilation, or other hazards. Several abandoned bunkers are partially collapsed and require special equipment and permission to access.

For that reason, I strongly recommend sticking to a legal guided tour unless you are an experienced urban explorer with the appropriate permission, equipment, and local knowledge.

I wouldn’t go crawling through random holes in Tbilisi looking for bunkers. The city has enough actual attractions that you don’t need to speedrun your way into becoming a cautionary tale.

Have any questions about the Soviet Bunkers of Tbilisi?

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