Tbilisi Old Town — Balcony Architecture
142.60 £
The interlocking wooden balcony architecture of Tbilisi’s Old Town (Kala) — the carved and painted wooden balconies of the 19th-century town houses overhanging the narrow streets, the sulphurous bathhouse domes visible in the background.
Description
Tbilisi’s Old Town is characterised by a distinctive wooden balcony architecture — the oriel balconies of the 19th-century town houses that lean over the narrow streets of the Kala and Abanotubani districts in intricate carved wood construction. The balconies serve as both exterior rooms and structural overhangs, their weight cantilevered from the main facade in a system that gives the streets a remarkable visual density of wood, window, and carved ornament. This image was made on a Kala alley at 8am in the morning light that illuminates the east-facing balconies: the carved ornament of the balcony fronts, the coloured paint layers peeling on the balcony floors, and the domestic details of plant pots and hanging laundry on the upper balconies are all legible in the soft morning light. The sulphurous bathhouse domes of Abanotubani are visible at the alley’s far end, their distinctive brick-dome forms identifying the neighbourhood.
