Mtatsminda Pantheon

The Pantheon sits on the slope of Mtatsminda, two hundred metres above the city, on a series of narrow terraces. Its centre is the church of Mamadaviti, a site connected with the sixth-century Assyrian father David of Gareja; by tradition his cave and spring were here, and childless women still come to the spring.

The cemetery was formally founded in 1929, to mark a century since the death of Alexander Griboedov. Griboedov, the Russian playwright and diplomat killed in Tehran in 1829, lies here with his Georgian wife Nino Chavchavadze. She was sixteen when she was widowed, and the epitaph she had cut — "Your mind and deeds are immortal in Russian memory, but why did my love outlive you?" — is the most quoted inscription in Tbilisi.

Also buried here:

• Ilia Chavchavadze, writer and reformer, murdered in 1907 and later canonised

• Akaki Tsereteli, Vazha-Pshavela, Nikoloz Baratashvili and Galaktion Tabidze

• Sergei Parajanov, the film director

• Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first president, reburied here in 2007

• Ekaterine Geladze, Stalin's mother

This is not a tourist site and does not try to be one. The paths are narrow, the stone crosses are furred with moss, and the only noise is leaves and the city left somewhere below. It is cool in summer, and in late autumn, when the maples turn, it is one of the most beautiful places in Tbilisi.

The funicular that brings most people up is itself a piece of history: it opened in 1905 and has closed and reopened several times since. Its intermediate station is at the Pantheon, so a good number of passengers step off here while the rest carry on to the amusement park at the top. That contrast — elderly women tending graves, and the noise of fairground rides two hundred metres higher up the same hill — says a fair amount about how Tbilisi uses its mountain.