Rustavi

Rustavi, the capital of Kvemo Kartli, lies on the Mtkvari about 25 km south-east of Tbilisi. It is an old name but a young city: a planned Soviet industrial town built from the 1940s around a giant steelworks, with wide avenues, Stalin-era apartment blocks with columns and arches in the old centre, and later estates decorated with mosaics. For anyone curious about Soviet architecture and town planning it makes an unusual half day out, and it sees almost no foreign tourists. The steelworks still runs on the edge of the city.

The other draws are speed and history. Rustavi International Motorpark, opened in 1978 and rebuilt in 2012, is Georgia's main racing circuit and hosts car and motorcycle events, track days and drifting. Within the city, the ruins of Rustavi fortress recall the medieval town that stood here long before the steelworks. Rustavi is easy to reach by marshrutka or taxi from Tbilisi, and it lies on one of the routes towards David Gareja.

Rustavi appears in Georgian chronicles as one of the ancient towns of Kartli, and in the Middle Ages it was a bishop's seat and trading town with a fortress by the Mtkvari. It was wrecked during the invasions of the 13th century and shrank to a village. The modern city was founded in the 1940s beside the new Transcaucasian Metallurgical Plant and received city status in 1948, growing into one of the largest cities in Georgia.