IOTA

An art hotel in Sololaki

The IOTA hotel stands in Sololaki, an old Tbilisi quarter beneath Mount Mtatsminda, at 10 Lermontov Street. It is easy to recognise by its copper-clad walls. In 2018 the World Luxury Hotel Awards named it the best luxury art hotel.

The owners explain the name like this: iota, a letter of the old Georgian alphabet that fell out of use in the nineteenth century, means in both Georgian and English the tiniest amount, as in not one iota. Yet even the smallest thing can hold something great, and IOTA is meant as a symbol of the depth and wisdom that live in simplicity. Inside there is grey concrete, warm wood and rust-coloured fabrics, and the rooms, from small singles to a terrace suite on the top floor, look out on the garden or the city.

In the lobby is the IOTA Garden restaurant with Japanese and European cooking, and its vertical and horizontal gardens make you feel you are sitting in nature in the middle of the city. Next to it is a second restaurant, Ghumeli, which the hotel calls the warmest place in Tbilisi. There is a meeting hall, and guests are taken to a fitness club nearby.