Bridge of Peace and Rike Park

The Bridge of Peace is the most argued-about modern structure in Tbilisi. It opened in May 2010, designed by the Italian architect Michele De Lucchi: about 150 metres long, a steel frame under a curving glass canopy. At night thousands of LEDs light up, and the programme spells out, in Morse code, the names of the chemical elements that make up the human body — a detail almost nobody notices.

Locals gave it a set of unflattering nicknames within a week. Functionally, though, it works: walking between the old town and the left bank became far easier once it opened.

At the far end lies Rike Park, laid out in the same years on what had been an industrial strip of riverbank. It contains:

• the lower station of the cable car, which lifts you to Narikala in two or three minutes

• a musical fountain and an oversized chessboard

• two enormous steel tubes — an unfinished concert and exhibition hall, also by De Lucchi, which never opened and stands empty

• the domed former presidential palace on the slope above

The park is a short stop rather than a day out: the grass is thin and there is little shade. Its value is logistical, since the bridge, the cable car, the car park and the riverside walks on both banks all converge here. In the evening, when the lighting comes on and the Metekhi cliff is floodlit, it is one of the best places to stand in the city.

The bridge is not a stand-alone object but part of a political programme. Between roughly 2008 and 2012 the government deliberately built modern, transparent structures across Georgia — glass police stations, the mushroom-canopied Public Service Hall on the left bank by Massimiliano Fuksas, this bridge. The message was transparency and a turn westwards. Whether that was good for the city or simply alien to old Tbilisi is still argued in Georgian newspapers, and you can form your own view in ten minutes here.