Georgian National Museum

Established in 2004, the Georgian National Museum (GNM) is the largest museum complex in Georgia, unifying several leading museums, research centers, and libraries. It presents internationally significant collections of art and dynamic exhibitions, providing audiences with inspiration and knowledge of the rich cultural heritage of Georgia. The museum’s diverse collections include evidence of the oldest human existence in Eurasia, medieval Christian art, gold and silver jewelry from ancient Colchis, modern and contemporary Georgian paintings, and masterpieces of Oriental, Western European, and Russian decorative arts.

Planning your visit

The Georgian National Museum is not one building but a federation — a complex established in 2004 that unified the country's leading museums, research centres and libraries under a single institution. The Simon Janashia Museum on Rustaveli Avenue is the main site most visitors mean, and it holds two things of genuine international significance. The first is the Dmanisi hominin material: skulls from roughly 1.8 million years ago, the oldest evidence of human ancestors found outside Africa, which reshaped understanding of when hominins first left the continent. The second is the treasury, a strong-room holding pre-Christian gold and silver from ancient Colchis — the land of the Golden Fleece — worked with a granulation technique of extraordinary fineness.

Elsewhere the network covers medieval Christian art, ethnography, modern Georgian painting including Pirosmani, and the Museum of Soviet Occupation documenting the twentieth century. Tbilisi's compact centre makes the main sites easy to reach on foot.

Bookable options include entry tickets, guided tours, and cultural experience formats that combine the museum with broader introductions to Georgian history. Guides earn their place here: Georgia's history — Colchis and Iberia, Christianisation in the fourth century, centuries between Persian, Ottoman and Russian pressure — is unfamiliar to most visitors, and the treasury in particular means more with context. Current availability is listed below.