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San Luis Valley

The San Luis Valley is a region in south-central Colorado with a small portion overlapping into New Mexico. The valley is approximately 122 mi long and 74 mi wide, extending from the Continental Divide on the northwest rim into New Mexico on the south. It contains 6 counties and portions of 3 others. It is an extensive high-elevation depositional basin of approximately 8000 sqmi with an average elevation of 7664 ft above sea level. The valley is a section of the Rio Grande Rift and is drained to the south by the Rio Grande, which rises in the San Juan Mountains to the west of the valley and flows south into New Mexico. The San Luis Valley has a cold desert climate but has substantial water resources from the Rio Grande and groundwater.

The San Luis Valley was ceded to the United States by Mexico following the Mexican–American War. Hispanic settlers began moving north and settling in the valley after the United States made a treaty with the Utes and established a fort in the early 1850s. Prior to the Mexican war the Spanish and Mexican governments had reserved the valley to the Utes. Later in the 19th century Anglo settlers began to settle in the valley and engaged in mining, ranching, and irrigated agriculture. Today the valley has a diverse Anglo and Hispanic population.

Utes
Prior to 1868 the Capote (Kapota) band of Ute Indians lived in the valley. The Utes made a treaty of peace with the United States in 1849 after the Mexican War. Shortly thereafter settlers from New Mexico established several small settlements in what is now Colorado and in 1868 the Utes were removed to a reservation in western Colorado. They continued to play a role in Saguache in the northwestern corner of the valley from the Los Pinos Agency to the west of Saguache until they lost their extensive reservation as the result of the Meeker Massacre in 1879.

Spanish and Mexican administration
The area was administered as part of the Spanish, later Mexican, province of Nuevo Mexico. In 1843, the government of New Mexico created the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant consisting of 1000000 acre of the valley and granted the family of Carlos Beaubien. The area was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

United States administration
Extensive settlement began in the San Luis Valley, primarily by Hispanic farmers and ranchers from New Mexico, in the 1850s. Early settlers built a church in the village that is now called San Luis and dedicated it on the Feast of Saint Louis, 21 June 1851. At present, the San Luis Valley has the largest native Hispanic population in Colorado; many families are directly descended from the original New Mexican settlers. The surge of immigration followed the construction by the U.S. Army of Fort Massachusetts for protection against the Utes, who had previously barred settlers. The history of the U.S. military presence in the valley is preserved at Fort Garland and other historic preserves in the valley.

The San Luis Valley became part of the Territory of Colorado in 1861. The original Ute population was confined to the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Indian reservations in the late 19th century.

 * Unlike the rest of Colorado, the United States surveyed the lands in the San Luis Valley using the New Mexico Meridian and Baseline.
 * The San Luis Valley was one of eight candidate sites to detonate the first atomic bomb with White Sands Proving Ground ultimately selected for the Trinity nuclear test.
 * The outlaw Felipe Espinosa operated in the San Luis Valley.

Geography
The San Luis Valley is the broad, generally flat, valley at the headwaters of the Rio Grande in south central Colorado and far north central New Mexico. The northern portion of the San Luis Valley is an endorheic basin; surface water does not exit this area. Irrigated agriculture is possible in the area due to groundwater and streams fed by the average 100 inches of snow the surrounding mountain ranges receive. The southern portion is drained by the Rio Grande.

There is no clear southern boundary but the term is generally used to include the San Luis Hills of southern Colorado and the Taos Plateau of northern New Mexico. About 50 miles from east to west and about 150 miles from north to south, the valley is bounded on the east by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and on the west by the San Juan Mountains.

Within Colorado the San Luis Valley is generally considered to comprise six Colorado counties: Saguache, Alamosa, Rio Grande, Conejos, Costilla and Mineral. The principal towns are: Alamosa, Monte Vista, Del Norte, South Fork, Creede, Saguache, Center, Fort Garland, San Luis, Antonito, La Jara, Capulin, Manassa, Sanford, Crestone, Villa Grove, Hooper, Mosca, San Acacio and a number of smaller locations. A few other counties of Colorado have some land in the Rio Grande Basin including Archuleta County, Hinsdale County and San Juan County.

Blanca Peak is prominent in the Sierra Blanca at the southern end of the northernmost section of the mountains, which is known as the Sangre de Cristo Range. There are several passes, with elevations between 9000 and 10000 ft, giving access to the valley. North La Veta Pass, through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, is used by U.S. Highway 160 and by the Colorado Pacific Rio Grande Railroad (formerly a branch of the Denver & Rio Grande Western) tracks. Other passes used historically were Medano, Mosca and Sangre de Cristo Passes.

The Great Sand Dunes are a famous feature of the valley. They lie directly to the west of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The dunes can reach 750 ft high. The Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is now in place to protect both the dunes and the numerous archeological sites found in the area. The natural valley aquifer is close to the surface in this part of the valley, and helps with maintenance of water levels in the San Luis Lakes, just to the west of the sand dunes.

Elevation rises as you go north in the valley to Poncha Pass, used now by U.S. Highway 285 and historically by the narrow gauge tracks of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. Otto Mears, then of Saguache, built and operated a historic toll road over Poncha Pass at the north end of the valley into the San Luis Valley during Colorado's 19th century mining era when the valley was the gateway to the San Juan and Gunnison country and the Ute agency was in the mountains west of Saguache. Mount Otto on the east side of the valley is named after him.

Cumbres Pass is a 10,015 ft. pass between Antonito, Colorado and Chama, New Mexico. The pass is traversed by State Highway 17 and the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad (originally built as the San Juan Extension of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad that ran to Durango, Colorado). From the headwaters of the Rio Grande Wolf Creek Pass is the route of U.S. Highway 160 between Del Norte, Colorado and Pagosa Springs, Colorado, while Slumgullion Pass is the route of State Highway 149 between U.S. Highway 160 and Lake City, Colorado. Stony Pass, sometimes spelled Stoney Pass, a historic wagon road to the mining camps of the San Juans, is now a jeep trail. At the north end of the valley, North Pass is the route of State Highway 114 between Saguache, Colorado and Gunnison, Colorado, bypassing the original route over Cochetopa Pass, now a county road.

The Rio Grande follows a course through the southern valley from Del Norte southeastward via Alamosa to New Mexico. South of Alamosa it is joined by several streams from the west including the Alamosa River and the Conejos River and Culebra Creek from the east. Most of the northern valley is an endorheic basin called the San Luis Closed Basin. Generally, within the Closed Basin the major streams such as Saguache Creek, San Luis Creek, and the streams from the west face of the Sangre de Cristos flow only a short distance onto the valley floor as surface streams. Only in very wet years, perhaps every 20 years, does the stream system in the Closed Basin flow as a contiguous unit into San Luis Lake at the low point of the Closed Basin west of the Great Sand Dunes.

Land ownership and management

About 50% of the 2000000 acre in the San Luis Valley is privately owned. Much of the land in the south part of the Valley, in Conejos and Costilla counties, was originally part of large Mexican land grants and is private land.

500000 acre on the borders of the valley (generally adjacent to National Forest Lands) are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, BLM, a division of the United States Department of the Interior. This land is usually leased to neighboring ranches for grazing for a nominal fee. Part of the value of a ranch is its continuing lease of BLM or National Forest lands.

Public lands in the mountains surrounding the San Luis Valley are generally part of the Rio Grande National Forest and are managed by the United States Forest Service.

Large areas of private lands have either been subdivided into small "ranch" lots or have been sold or donated to the Federal government and make up portions of the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, other wildlife preserves, and various state wildlife sites.

Geology

The San Luis Valley contains an alluvial basin, the Alamosa Basin, which lies at the north end of the Rio Grande rift. Deposits include the deeper alluvial strata, overlying Precambrian basement rock, Eocene alluvial deposits from a shallow Laramide depression, the Blanco Basin Formation; and Oligocene ash and lava flows associated with the Conejos Formation, is the Santa Fe formation, mixed alluvium and lava outflows from the San Juan volcanic field to the west; later strata comprise the Alamosa formation, alternating layers of sand, gravel, and clay. The relatively impermeable clay layers trap ground water in the "confined aquifer" which, if tapped, supplies artesian wells. Surface waters, including the Rio Grande and other streams, are hydrologically connected to the "unconfined aquifer" a shallow ground water formation which underlies much of the valley. The deeper confined aquifers have sufficient hydrological connection with the surface waters of the valley that they are not considered for the purposes of Colorado water law "nontributary" waters which could legally be mined. Streams which flow into the valley, particularly the Rio Grande, have deposited alluvial fans where they emerge from higher terrain onto the valley floor.

Ancestral Rockies, the Central Colorado Trough, and the San Luis-Uncompahgre Highlands
The gap between the Precambrian basement rock and the Eocene alluvial deposits in the San Luis Valley is considered evidence that much of southern Colorado, including the western portion of the San Luis Valley, was highlands in the period prior to the Eocene Epoch, 56 to 34 million years ago. There were lowlands to the north in central Colorado, the Colorado sag, an east–west basin. It is from those highlands to the west, in Paleozoic, Pennsylvanian, and Permian times that the coarse alluvial deposits of the Sangre de Cristo Formation such as the Crestone Conglomerate originated. The Minturn Formation, a limestone formation exemplified at Marble Mountain on the crest of the Sangre de Cristos, is evidence of a sea in the Central Colorado Trough during the era of the Ancestral Rockies.

Western Interior Seaway
In the middle and late Cretaceous Period, about 100 million years ago, the San Luis Valley lay on the shore of or beneath the Western Interior Seaway, a shallow sea which divided North America into two parts. As the sea deepened and expanded sand and gravel eroded from mountains in the west was deposited in the Dakota Formation; later, when the sea was deeper mud and sand were deposited in the Mancos Shale. The Lexam oil play near Crestone is based on the hypothesis that there is oil trapped in Dakota Formation sandstones lying beneath Mancos Shale to the west of the Sangre de Cristo fault at the western base of the Sangre de Cristo Range southwest of Crestone. Drilling at the base of the range during gold exploration in the vicinity showed small amounts of oil and evidence of the existence of those formations as well as the underlying Morrison Formation. Prior to this discovery it was assumed that these formations had eroded away during the Laramide orogeny.

Laramide orogeny
Building of the Rocky Mountains by folding during the Laramide orogeny 80 to 55 million years ago created a highland, the San Luis-Brazos uplift, in the area of the San Luis Valley. This process over 30 million years resulted in an elevated and highly eroded peneplain where the San Luis Valley is today. There was a basin in its western portion which may have drained west through the course historically followed by the San Juan River. Sedimentary deposits formed in that basin during Eocene times remain in place beneath the western portion of the San Luis Valley. During the Pleistocene, parts of the valley were occupied by Lake Alamosa.

Agriculture and wildlife
Much of the land in the San Luis Valley is used for grazing. Farming is generally concentrated around the towns of Alamosa, Monte Vista and Center. Principal crops include potatoes, head lettuce, wheat, and barley. The barley grown here is the main supplier for Coors beer company. In 1982, quinoa was successfully grown for the first time outside of South America in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, and commercial growth has occurred since 1987. Less favored areas with a shorter growing season and less access to water rights tend to be devoted to alfalfa and grazing. Broad areas, especially in Saguache County, Colorado have a high water table or are even flooded part of the year. Uncultivated land is often covered with "chico", low brush such as rabbitbrush, greasewood and other woody species. Cropland is typically irrigated with large ($1/4$ mile radius) center-pivot irrigation systems, and a common feature of the Rio Grande Delta area where the Rio Grande enters the valley are large piles of potato-sized rocks screened from the soil.

The area supports a wide variety of wildlife. Sandhill cranes migrate through the valley every spring and fall. The Monte Vista Crane Festival takes place in March, centering on the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge located 6 mi south of town. The valley is a flyway for many migrating birds including avocets, bald eagles, goldfinches, and a plethora of hawk species.

Agriculture in the San Luis Valley is enabled by irrigation, since average annual precipitation is just 7 - 10 in whereas most ag crop production requires at least twice that much water. Surface water rights in the Valley began to be allocated in 1852, with the People's Ditch, near San Luis. In the 1870s, some 50000 acre of the San Luis Valley were irrigated, which rose to 800000 acre in the 1880s. By the early 1900s, demand for surface water had outstripped the available supply and farmers began to use subsurface wells to supply water. Over 5,000 groundwater wells existed by the time of World War I. By the early 1970s, water availability began to be limited, with the State enforcing a moratorium on new wells in much of the valley in 1972, and then completely ending new appropriations of water throughout the valley in 1981. The 1980s and 90s saw relatively bountiful water years in the valley, with drought conditions becoming the norm in the 2010s. , water use cutbacks are anticipated due to a court order requiring the restoration of 400,000 acre-feet of water to the groundwater aquifer, as well as the forecast for reduced Rio Grande flows in future years.

Economy
Predominantly agricultural in nature, the area is also one of the poorest rural areas of Colorado, with a poverty rate estimated at between 20 and 25% in 2019. The San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center is the largest employer in the valley, with over 600 employees.

Tourism has become a more important part of the economy in recent years, coupled with attempts to develop the area as a retirement destination. The arts are becoming an increasing force in expanding the economy of the San Luis Valley.

Tourist attractions
Tourist attractions suggested by National Geographic Traveler include the Monte Vista Crane Festival in March, Los Caminos Antiguos, a regional road network, the Luther Bean Museum at Adams State University. Multiple Hot springs the Sand Dunes Swimming Pool Hot Spring and Joyful Journey Hot Springs. The Firedworks Gallery on Main Street in Alamosa for regional history and art, and regional Mexican food. Also recommended near Alamosa for wildlife viewing are The Alamosa Ranch north of town and the Alamosa National Wildlife Refuge to the southeast. To the northeast of Alamosa lie the San Luis Lakes State Wildlife Area, the San Luis Lakes and the Great Sand Dunes National Park

At Fort Garland, Colorado south of the Great Sand Dunes on U.S. Highway 160 the Fort Garland Museum is recommended and further south on State Highway 159 at San Luis, Colorado, the oldest town in Colorado, the bronze sculptures by Huberto Maestas, depicting the Stations of the Cross. From San Luis, the National Geographic road trip suggests traveling west on State Highway 142 through Manassa, Colorado, then south on U.S. Highway 285 past Conejos, Colorado then west on State Highway 17 over Cumbres Pass to Chama, New Mexico paralleling the route of the narrow gauge Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad.

Rock climbing and camping are available at Penitente Canyon and other locations. Rito Seco Park, located east of San Luis and named for a creek called Rito Seco, was established as a campground in the 1970s. However, it lacked hiking trails. Then in 2022, after more than a decade of planning, Costilla County and an organization called San Luis Valley Great Outdoors built three hiking trails and one single track mountain bike trail in the park.

The San Louis Valley is also home to the Colorado Gator Reptile Rescue. The Reptile rescue is open to the public to view and interact with many different types of reptiles from Gators to Tortoises. The rescue uses thermal hot springs water to maintain the gators through the winter months and is home to Morris the Movie Star Gator

Art community
There are over 500 known artists living in the San Luis Valley as evidenced by an ongoing directory maintained by Monte Vista artists' group, The Art Thing, The Art Thing's membership boasts several nationally recognized artists working in various media. Monte Vista is also home to the Monte Arts Council as well as several festivals and an art tour that attracts artists from as far away as California and North Carolina. The arts of the San Luis Valley draw from traditions of the early Utes, Apaches, and Comanches and the later Spanish-speaking immigrants.

The San Luis Valley is home to five active live theaters, two at Adams State University, The Creede Repertory Theater, The Old Spanish Trails Theatre Company and Rocky Mountain Stage in Monte Vista. In August there are two major Music Festivals, the Spanish Trails Music Festival and Mexican Rodeo, and Rhythms on the Rio. Music in the valley is sponsored by the South Fork Music Association and the Alamosa Live Music Association.

Solar energy
The San Luis Valley is an alpine desert environment which is conducive to solar energy production. It has the highest per capita concentration of home-based solar energy systems in the United States. Colorado law requires that 30% of the power used in the state be generated from renewable sources by 2020. It also requires that 3% of the power generated be used at or near where it is generated; i.e. distributed generation.

There are also a number of utility-scale photovoltaic power stations in the valley, and an active market in selling or leasing land to be used for solar facilities. In 2007, SunEdison constructed the 7.7 megawatt Alamosa Photovoltaic Power Plant on about 80 acres near the town of Mosca, Colorado. It was the largest grid-connected solar electric facility in the United States at that time. It was followed in 2010 by the 19 megawatt Greater Sandhill Solar Plant, in 2011 by the 30 megawatt San Luis Valley Solar Ranch, in 2012 by the 30 megawatt Alamosa Solar Generating Project, and in 2015 by the 50 megawatt Hooper Solar PV Power Plant. All are located on previously developed agricultural lands near Mosca.

On 11 December 2009, more than 125 people gathered to respond to a proposal by Tessera Solar (affiliated with Stirling Energy Systems) to install 8,000 parabolic mirrors, 40 feet each, on 1500 acre near Saguache, Colorado. At issue was the noise expected to be generated by the numerous stirling engine generators, and the wisdom of industrial solar facilities in general. The application for a permit was withdrawn on 11 July 2011. There has also been controversy regarding proposed transmission lines over both Poncha and La Veta passes, which would open the door to much more industrial solar development. Opposition to a proposed transmission line has resulted in possible delays in development of solar facilities by Xcel Energy which together with Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association serves the valley. In 2012, the United States Department of Interior designated several Solar Energy Zones on BLM lands in the valley, although no projects have yet been announced to be in development.

Demography
A significant portion of the residents of the San Luis Valley are Hispanic with historic populations in Costilla and Conejos counties which were settled by early migrants from New Mexico. There are a few Native Americans in the valley. There are small Amish communities which were recently established.

Much of the grazing land on the floor of the valley is of little value. In Costilla County, large tracts of land have been subdivided into 5 acre plots. 35 acre plots are also common in the valley as a 35-acre plot allows drilling a well to water a garden and livestock. These have been sold to homesteaders who often live off-the-grid.

La Puente, headquartered in Alamosa offers social services to the homeless and others in the valley.

Higher education
Adams State University, a four-year state college at Alamosa, with approximately 3,500 students, is the major educational institution in the Valley. It is supplemented by a campus of Trinidad State College in Alamosa.

Health
San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center is a full service Acute-Care hospital and specialty physician clinic.

A locally conducted survey of public health statistics showed a considerable deficiency with respect to most measures of public health. There is a deficiency of medical providers, for example, 106 physicians per 100,000 compared to the Colorado average of 278.

title: San Luis Valley


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Tbilisi

Tbilisi (თბილისი, ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis, (ტფილისი) is the capital and largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of around 1.2 million people. Tbilisi was founded in the fifth century AD by Vakhtang I of Iberia, and since then has served as the capital of various Georgian kingdoms and republics. Between 1801 and 1917, then part of the Russian Empire, Tiflis was the seat of the Caucasus Viceroyalty, governing both the northern and the southern parts of the Caucasus.

Because of its location at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, and its proximity to the lucrative Silk Road, throughout history, Tbilisi has been a point of contention among various global powers. To this day, the city's location ensures its position as an important transit route for energy and trade projects. Tbilisi's history is reflected in its architecture, which is a mix of medieval, neoclassical, Beaux Arts, Art Nouveau, Stalinist, and Modern structures.

Historically, Tbilisi has been home to people of multiple cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, though its population is overwhelmingly Eastern Orthodox Christian. Notable tourist destinations include cathedrals Sameba and Sioni, Freedom Square, Rustaveli Avenue and Agmashenebeli Avenue, medieval Narikala Fortress, the pseudo-Moorish Opera Theater, and the Georgian National Museum. The climate in Tbilisi mostly ranges from 20 to 32 °C in summer and -1 to 7 °C in winter.

Names and etymology
The name "Tbilisi" derives from Old Georgian Tbilisi (Asomtavruli:, Mkhedruli: ), and further from tpili (Modern Georgian: , warm, itself from Old Georgian: ṭpili). The name Tbilisi (the place of warmth) was therefore given to the city because of the area's numerous sulfuric hot springs.

Until 1936, the name of the city in English and most other languages followed the Persian pronunciation Tiflis, while the Georgian name was ტფილისი (Ṭpilisi).

On 17 August 1936, by order of the Soviet leadership, the official Russian names of various cities were changed to more closely match the local language. In addition, the Georgian-language form Ṭpilisi was modernized on the basis of a proposal by Georgian linguists; the ancient Georgian component ტფილი (ṭpili, 'warm') was replaced by the newer თბილი (tbili). That form was the basis for the new official Russian name (Тбилиси Tbilisi). Most other languages have subsequently adopted the new name form, but some languages, such as Turkish, Persian, Greek, Spanish, and German, have retained a variation of Tiflis.

On 20 September 2006, the Georgian parliament held a ceremony celebrating the 70th anniversary of the renaming.

Some of the traditional names of Tbilisi in other languages of the region have different roots. The Ossetian name Калак (Kalak) derives from the Georgian word ქალაქი (kalaki) meaning simply city. Chechen and Ingush names for the city use a form similar to or the same as their names for the country of Georgia (Гуьржех Gürƶex) as does the historical Kabardian name (Курджы Kwrdžə), while Abkhaz Қарҭ (Ķarţ) is from the Mingrelian ქართი (Karti).

Early history
Archaeologists discovered evidence of continuous habitation of the Tbilisi suburb of Dighomi since the early Bronze Age, and stone artifacts dating to the Paleolithic age.

During the late Bronze Age to early Iron Age, it was the largest settlement in the Caucasus. According to legend, the present-day territory of Tbilisi was covered by forests as late as 458. One widely accepted variant of the Tbilisi foundation myth states that King Vakhtang I of Iberia ((r. c. 447/49 – 502/22)) went hunting in the heavily wooded region with a falcon (sometimes the falcon is replaced with either a hawk or other small birds of prey in the legend). The king's falcon allegedly caught or injured a pheasant during the hunt, after which both birds fell into a nearby hot spring and died from burns. King Vakhtang became so impressed with the hot springs that he decided to clear the forest and build a city on the location.

King Dachi of Iberia ((r. 522 – 534)), the successor of Vakhtang I, moved the capital of Iberia from Mtskheta to Tbilisi and began construction of the fortress wall that lined the city's new boundaries. From the sixth century, Tbilisi grew at a steady pace due to the region's strategic location along with important trade and travel routes between Europe and Asia.

Foreign domination
Tbilisi's favorable trade location, however, did not necessarily bode well for its survival. Located strategically in the heart of the Caucasus between Europe and Asia, Tbilisi became an object of rivalry among the region's various powers such as the Roman Empire, Parthia, Sassanid Persia, Muslim Arabs, the Byzantine Empire, and the Seljuk Turks. The cultural development of the city was somewhat dependent on who ruled the city at various times, although Tbilisi was fairly cosmopolitan.

From 570 to 580, the Persians ruled the city until 627, when Tbilisi was sacked by the Byzantine/Khazar armies and later, in 736–738, Arab armies entered the town under Marwan II. After this point, the Arabs established an emirate centered in Tbilisi. Arabic dirhams were brought to Georgia following the Arab conquest in the seventh century, and a mint was founded in Tbilisi that produced coins with inscriptions in both Arabic and Georgian. In 764, Tbilisi – still under Arab control – was once again sacked by the Khazars. In 853, the armies of Arab leader Bugha Al-Turki invaded Tbilisi in order to enforce its return to Abbasid allegiance. The Arab domination of Tbilisi continued until about 1050. In 1065, the Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan campaigned against the Kingdom of Georgia, subjugated Tbilisi, and built a mosque in the city.

Capital of Georgia
In 1121, after the Battle of Didgori against the Seljuks, the troops of King David IV of Georgia besieged Tbilisi, taking it in 1122. David moved his residence from Kutaisi to Tbilisi, making it the capital of a unified Georgian State, thus inaugurating the Georgian Golden Age. From the 12–13th centuries, Tbilisi became a regional power with a thriving economy and astonishing cultural output. By the end of the 12th century, the population of Tbilisi had reached 100,000. The city also became an important literary and cultural center, not only for Georgia, but also for the Eastern Orthodox world of the time. During Queen Tamar's reign, Shota Rustaveli worked in Tbilisi while writing his legendary epic poem, "The Knight in the Panther's Skin". This period is often referred to as "Georgia's Golden Age" or the Georgian Renaissance.

Mongol domination and other instability
Tbilisi's "Golden Age" did not last for more than a century. In 1226, Tbilisi was captured by the Khwarezmian Empire under Shah Jalal al-Din, leaving its defenses severely devastated and prone to further attacks by Mongol armies. In 1236, after suffering crushing Mongol defeats, Georgia submitted to Mongol domination. The nation itself maintained a form of “semi-independence” and did not lose its statehood, but Tbilisi would be strongly influenced by the Mongols for the next century, both politically and culturally. In the 1320s, the Mongols retreated from Georgia, and Tbilisi became the capital of an independent Georgian state, once again. However, an outbreak of the Black Death struck the city in 1366.

Between the late 14th century and the late 18th century, Tbilisi would again be under the rule of various foreign powers. On several occasions, the city would even be completely burned and razed to the ground. In 1386, Tbilisi was invaded and sacked several times by the armies of Tamerlane. In 1440, the city was invaded and destroyed by Jahan Shah (the Shah of the town of Tabriz, Persia). From 1477 to 1478, the city was held by the Ak Koyunlu tribesmen of Uzun Hassan.

Iranian control

As early as the 1510s, Tbilisi (and the kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti) were made vassal territories of Safavid Iran. In 1522, Tbilisi was garrisoned for the first time by a large Safavid force. Following the death of king (shah) Ismail I (r. 1501–1524), king David X of Kartli expelled the Iranians. During this period, many parts of Tbilisi were reconstructed and rebuilt. The four campaigns of the king Tahmasp I (r. 1524–1576) resulted in the reoccupation of Kartli and Kakheti, and a Safavid force was permanently stationed in Tbilisi from 1551 onwards. With the 1555 Treaty of Amasya, and more firmly from 1614 to 1747, with brief intermissions, Tbilisi was an important city under Iranian rule, and it functioned as a seat of the Iranian vassal kings of Kartli whom the shah conferred with the title of vali. In 1718, the Venetian senate implored the Safavid emperor Soltan Hoseyn to protect the Catholic Armenians and Capuchin missionaries in Tbilisi from the Gregorian Armenians. Under the later rules of Teimuraz II and Heraclius II, Tbilisi became a vibrant political and cultural center free of foreign rule—but, fearful of the constant threat of invasion, Georgia's rulers sought Russian protection in the 1783 Treaty of Georgievsk. Despite this agreement, the city was captured and devastated in 1795 by the Iranian Qajar ruler Agha Mohammad Khan, who sought to re-establish Iran's traditional sovereignty over the region.

Russian control
In 1801, the Russian Empire annexed the Georgian Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti (of which Tbilisi was the capital), later cementing its rule with the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813, which ended Iranian control of Georgia. Within Tsarist Russia, Tbilisi (known then as Tiflis) was included within the Tiflis Uyezd county in 1801, and became the administrative center of the Tiflis Governorate (Gubernia) following the latter's establishment in 1846. Russian Imperial administrators implemented a new European-style city plan and commissioned new buildings in Western styles. Roads and railroads were built to connect Tbilisi to other important cities in the Russian Empire, such as Batumi and Poti. By the 1850s, Tbilisi once again emerged as a major trade and cultural center. The likes of Ilia Chavchavadze, Akaki Tsereteli, Mirza Fatali Akhundzade, Iakob Gogebashvili, Alexander Griboyedov and many other statesmen, poets and artists all found their home in Tbilisi. The city was visited on numerous occasions by and was the object of affection of Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Lermontov, the Romanov family and others. The main new artery built under Russian administration was Golovin Avenue (present-day Rustaveli Avenue), on which the Viceroys of the Caucasus established their residence. For much of the early 19th century, Tbilisi's largest ethnic group was Armenian, at some point forming 74.3% of the population.

Brief independence
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the city served as a location of the Transcaucasus interim government which established, in the spring of 1918, the short-lived independent Transcaucasian Federation with the capital in Tbilisi. At this time, Tbilisi had roughly the same number of Armenians as Georgians, with Russians being the third largest ethnic group. It was in the former Viceroy of the Caucasus's palace where the independence of three Transcaucasus nations – Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – was declared by their respective national councils on 26 to 28 May 1918. After this, Tbilisi functioned as the capital of the Democratic Republic of Georgia until 25 February 1921. From 1918 to 1919, the city also consecutively served as the headquarters of the country's German garrison and later the British 27th Division; Tbilisi was also the main office of the British Chief Commissioner in Transcaucasia, Oliver Wardrop and the High Commissioner to Armenia, Colonel William N. Haskell.

Under the national government, Tbilisi turned into the first Caucasian University City after the Tbilisi State University was founded in 1918. On 25 February 1921, the Bolshevist Russian 11th Red Army invaded Tbilisi and after bitter fighting at the outskirts of the city, declared Soviet rule.

Soviet rule
In 1921, the Democratic Republic of Georgia was occupied by the Soviet Bolshevik forces from Russia, and until 1936, Tbilisi functioned first as the capital city of the Transcaucasian SFSR (which included Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia), and afterward until 1991 as the capital of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. During Soviet rule, Tbilisi's population grew significantly, the city became more industrialized, and it also came to be an important political, social, and cultural centre of the Soviet Union. In 1980, the city hosted the first state-sanctioned rock festival in the USSR. As a major tourist destination for both Soviet citizens and foreign visitors, Tbilisi's "Old Town" (the neighborhoods within the original city walls) was reconstructed in the 1970s and 1980s.

Tbilisi witnessed mass anti-Russian demonstrations during 1956 in the 9 March Massacre, in protest against the anti-Stalin policies of Nikita Khrushchev. Peaceful protests occurred in 1978, and in 1989 the April 9 tragedy was a peaceful protest that turned violent.

Post-independence
Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Tbilisi has experienced periods of significant instability and turmoil. After a brief civil war, which the city endured for two weeks from December 1991 to January 1992 (when pro-Gamsakhurdia and Opposition forces clashed), Tbilisi became the scene of frequent armed confrontations among various mafia clans and illegal business operators. During the Shevardnadze Era (1992–2003), crime and corruption were rampant. Many segments of society became impoverished because of unemployment caused by the crumbling economy. Average citizens of Tbilisi started to become increasingly disillusioned with the existing quality of life in the city (and in the nation in general). Mass protests took place in November 2003 after falsified parliamentary elections forced more than 100,000 people into the streets and concluded with the Rose Revolution. Since 2003, Tbilisi has experienced considerably more stability with decreasing crime rates, an improved economy, and a real estate boom. During the 2008 South Ossetia war, the Tbilisi area was hit by multiple Russian air attacks.

After the war, several large-scale projects were started, including a streetcar system, a railway bypass and a relocation of the central station, and new urban highways. In June 2015, a flood killed at least twenty people and caused animals from the city's zoo to be released into the streets.

Politics and administration

The status of Tbilisi, as the nation's capital, is defined by Article 10 of the Constitution of Georgia (1995) and the Law on Georgia's Capital – Tbilisi (20 February 1998).

Tbilisi is governed by the Tbilisi City Assembly (Sakrebulo) and the Tbilisi City Hall (Meria). The City Assembly and mayor are elected once every four years by direct elections. The Mayor of Tbilisi is Kakha Kaladze and the Chairman of the Tbilisi city Assembly is Giorgi Alibegashvili.

Administratively, the city is divided into raions (districts), which have their own units of central and local government with jurisdiction over a limited scope of affairs. This subdivision was established under Soviet rule in the 1930s, following the general subdivision of the Soviet Union. After Georgia regained independence, the raion system was modified and reshuffled. According to the latest revision, Tbilisi raions include: Most of the raions are named after historic quarters of the city. The citizens of Tbilisi widely recognize an informal system of smaller historic neighborhoods. Such neighborhoods are several, however, constituting a kind of hierarchy, because most of them have lost their distinctive topographic limits. The natural first level of subdivision of the city is into the right and left banks of the Mtkvari river.
 * Mtatsminda District, Including Neighborhoods: Mtatsminda, Sololaki, Vera, Kiketi, Kojori, Shindisi, Tsavkisi, Tabakhmela, Oqrokana
 * Vake District, Including Neighborhoods: Vake, Bagebi, Upper Saburtalo, Nutsubidze Plateau, Tskneti
 * Saburtalo District, Including Neighborhoods: Lower Saburtalo, Vedzisi, Vashlijvari, Didi Dighomi, Patara Dighomi, Zurgovana
 * Krtsanisi District, Including Neighborhoods: Abanotubani, Kala, Ortachala, Ponichala
 * Isani District, Including Neighborhoods: Avlabari, Isani, Navtlughi, Metromsheni, Vazisubani, Eighth Legioni
 * Samgori District, Including Neighborhoods: Varketili, Third Array, Orkhevi, Dampalo, Lilo, Lower Samgori, Africa
 * Chughureti District, Including Neighborhoods: Chughureti, Ivertubani, Kukia, Svanetisubani
 * Didube District, Including Neighborhoods: Didube, Dighomi Massive
 * Nadzaladevi District, Including Neighborhoods: Nadzaladevi, Sanzona, Temka, Lotkini
 * Gldani District, Including Neighborhoods: Gldani, Avchala, Mukhiani, Gldanula

The names of the oldest neighborhoods go back to the early Middle Ages and sometimes pose a great linguistic interest. The newest whole-built developments bear chiefly residential marketing names.

In 19th-century Tbilisi, the Georgian quarter was confined to the southeastern part of the city; Baedeker describes the layout succinctly:

"In the north part of the town, on the left bank of the Kurá and to the south of the railway station, stretches the clean German Quarter, formerly occupied by German immigrants from Württemberg (1818). To the south is the Gruzinian or Georgian Quarter (Avlabár). On the right bank of the Kurá is the Russian Quarter, the seat of the officials and of the larger business firms. This is adjoined on the south by the Armenian and Persian Bazaars."

Location
Tbilisi is located in the South Caucasus at 41° 43' North and 44° 47' East. The city lies in Eastern Georgia on both banks of the Kura River (locally known as Mtkvari). The elevation of the city ranges from 380-770 m and has the shape of an amphitheatre surrounded by mountains on three sides. To the north, Tbilisi is bounded by the Saguramo Range, to the east and south-east by the Iori Plain, to the south and west by various endings (subranges) of the Trialeti Range.

The relief of Tbilisi is complex. The part of the city which lies on the left bank of the Kura River extends for more than 30 km from the Avchala District to River Lochini. The part of the city which lies on the right side of the river, though, is built along the foothills of the Trialeti Range, the slopes of which in many cases descend all the way to the edges of the river. The mountains, therefore, are a significant barrier to urban development on its right bank. This type of a geographic environment creates pockets of very densely developed areas, while other parts of the city are left undeveloped due to the complex topographic relief.

To the north of the city, a large reservoir (commonly known as the Tbilisi Sea) is fed by irrigation canals.

Climate
Tbilisi has a humid temperate climate (Köppen: Cfa, Trewartha: Do) with considerable continental and semi-arid influences. The city experiences hot, humid summers and moderately cold dry winters. Like other regions of Georgia, Tbilisi receives significant rainfall throughout the year with no distinct dry period. The city's climate is influenced both by dry (Central Asian/Siberian) air masses from the east and oceanic (Atlantic/Black Sea) air masses from the west. Because the city is bounded on most sides by mountain ranges, the close proximity to large bodies of water (Black and Caspian Seas) and the fact that the Greater Caucasus Mountains Range (further to the north) blocks the intrusion of cold air masses from Russia, Tbilisi has a relatively mild microclimate compared to other cities that possess a similar climate along the same latitudes.

The average annual temperature in Tbilisi is 13.8 °C. January is the coldest month with an average temperature of 2.7 °C. July is the hottest month with an average temperature of 25.4 °C. Daytime high temperatures reach or exceed 32 °C on an average of 22 days during a typical year. The absolute minimum recorded temperature is -24.4 °C in January 1883 and the absolute maximum is 42.0 °C on 17 July 1882. Average annual precipitation is 511.5 mm. May is the wettest month (averaging 84.0 mm of precipitation) while January is the driest (averaging 16.4 mm of precipitation). Snow falls on average 15–25 days per year. The surrounding mountains often trap the clouds within and around the city, mainly during the Spring and Autumn months, resulting in prolonged rainy and/or cloudy weather. Northwesterly winds dominate in most parts of Tbilisi throughout the year. Southeasterly winds are common as well.

Population
As a multiethnic city, Tbilisi is home to more than 100 ethnic groups. Around 90% of the population consists of ethnic Georgians, with significant populations of other ethnic groups such as Armenians, Russians, and Azerbaijanis. Along with the above-mentioned groups, Tbilisi is home to other ethnic groups including Ossetians, Abkhazians, Ukrainians, Greeks, Jews, Assyrians, Yazidis, and others.

Religion
More than 95% of the residents of Tbilisi practise some form of Christianity (the most predominant of which is the Georgian Orthodox Church). The Russian Orthodox Church, which is in full communion with the Georgian Orthodox Church, and the Armenian Apostolic Church have significant followings as well. A minority of the population (around 1.5%) practises Islam (mainly Shia Islam), while about 0.1% of Tbilisi's population practises Judaism. Also, a Roman Catholic church and the Yazidi Sultan Ezid Temple can be found in the city.

Sports
Until the beginning of the 19th century, sports such as horse-riding (polo in particular), wrestling, boxing, and marksmanship were the most popular city sports. Influence from the Russian Empire brought more Western sports and activities (billiards, fencing) to Tbilisi.

The Soviet period brought an increased popularization of sports that were common in Europe and, to a certain extent, the United States. At the same time, Tbilisi developed the necessary infrastructure for professional sports. By 1978, the city had around 250 large and small sports facilities, including, among others, four indoor and six outdoor Olympic-sized pools, 185 basketball courts and halls, 192 volleyball facilities, 82 handball arenas, 19 tennis courts, 31 football fields, and five stadiums. The largest stadium in Tbilisi is the Dinamo Arena (55,000 seats) and the second-largest is the Mikheil Meskhi Stadium (24,680 seats). The Sports Palace, which usually hosts basketball games with high attendance and tennis tournaments, can seat about 11,000 people. Vere Basketball Hall is a smaller indoor sports arena with a seating capacity of 2,500.

Football is the most popular sport in Tbilisi, followed by rugby and basketball. Other popular sports include wrestling, tennis, swimming, and water polo. It has several professional football and rugby teams, as well as wrestling clubs. U.S. National Basketball Association players Zaza Pachulia and Nikoloz Tskitishvili are Tbilisi natives. Outside of professional sports, the city has a number of intercollegiate and amateur sports teams and clubs.

Tbilisi's signature football club, Dinamo Tbilisi, has not won a major European championship since the 1980–1981 season, when it won the European UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and became the easternmost team in Europe to achieve the feat. The basketball club Dinamo Tbilisi won the Euroleague in 1962, but also never repeated any such feat.

Tbilisi hosted Group A matches for the EuroBasket 2022 at the new 10,000-seat Tbilisi Arena (next to the Olympic Palace), as one of the tournament co-hosts alongside Czech Republic (Prague), Germany (Berlin, Cologne), and Italy (Milan).

Media
The large majority of Georgia's media companies (including television, newspaper, and radio) are headquartered in Tbilisi. The city is home to the popular television channels Rustavi 2, Imedi, TV Pirveli, Mtavari Arkhi, Formula, Maestro, and the Public Broadcasting Channel, among others. Tbilisi's television market has experienced notable changes since 2019, when changes in the ownership of Rustavi 2 prompted many of its employees to leave and partake in the creation of new television channels, namely Mtavari Arkhi and TV Formula.

Tbilisi has a number of newspaper publishing houses. Some of the most noteworthy newspapers include the daily 24 Saati ("24 Hours"), Rezonansi ("Resonance"), Alia, the English-language daily The Messenger, weekly FINANCIAL, Georgia Today, and the English-language weekly The Georgian Times. Out of the city's radio stations Imedi Radio (105.9 FM), Fortuna, and Radio 105 are some of the most influential competitors with large national audiences.

Radio stations in Tbilisi include 5 Lines Radio (93.8 FM), Europe +Tbilisi (99.6 FM), and Georgian Patriarchy Radio (105.4 FM).

Architecture
The architecture in the city is a mixture of local (Georgian) and Byzantine, Neoclassical, Art Nouveau, Beaux-Arts, Middle Eastern, and Soviet modern styles. Very few buildings survived the destruction of the city in 1795, so most historical buildings in Tbilisi date to the Russian Imperial period (1801–1917). The oldest parts of the city (Kala, Abanotubani, Avlabari) were largely rebuilt on their medieval street plans, and some old houses were even rebuilt on much older foundations. The areas of downtown Tbilisi which were developed according to a European-style plan by Russian authorities (Sololaki, Rustaveli Avenue, Vera, etc.) have a Western appearance, with a mix of styles popular in Europe at the time: Beaux Arts, Orientalist, and various period revival styles.

Tbilisi is most notable for its abundance of Art Nouveau buildings and details (common in Sololaki and Chughureti), which flourished from the mid-1890s to through the end of Russian rule. Art Nouveau was decreed as bourgeois by communist authorities, who introduced experimental modern architecture. The more conservative and historically inflected Stalinist architecture in Georgia is embodied by the 1938 Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute building ("Imeli"), now housing the Biltmore Hotel Tbilisi.

Tbilisi's postwar architecture is similar to the brand of midcentury modernism found across the Soviet Union. The city expanded dramatically in response to a housing crisis after World War II. Entire neighborhoods (Saburtalo, Dighomi) appeared on the outskirts of the city in a matter of decades, built with advances in mass-production technology. Georgian architects produced some of the Soviet Union's most interesting architectural achievements, including Tbilisi's 1975 Ministry of Roads and the 1984 Wedding Palace. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the urban landscape is largely characterized by unregulated construction. New towers occupy formerly public spaces and overcrowded apartment buildings sprout "kamikaze loggia" overnight. Since 2004, the city government has taken initiatives to curb uncontrolled construction projects with mixed success. Tbilisi now has several skyscraper complexes, such as the Axis Towers, Hilton Garden Inn Tbilisi Chavchavadze, Holiday Inn Tbilisi, and King David Residences.

Art museums and galleries
The Georgian National Museum gathers several important museums, including the Art Museum of Georgia. The Museum of Modern Art was founded in 2012. Two independent contemporary art organizations, Kunsthalle Tbilisi and Open Space of Experimental Art, were founded in 2018. Among many other museums, there are the Giorgi Leonidze State Museum of Literature and the Writer's House of Georgia.

Performing arts
The city has important theatre and music institutions, such as the Tbilisi State Conservatoire, the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Shota Rustaveli State Academic Theatre, Marjanishvili State Academic Theatre, Rezo Gabriadze Marionette Theatre and Royal District Theatre.

Film Festival
The Tbilisi International Film Festival (TIFF) is hosted by the Cinema Art Center, Prometheus. It was first held in 2000, within a larger framework of festivals called Gift, until the Prometheus centre was established in 2002, after which it has been held there. It is located at 164 Agmashenebeli Avenue.

World Book Capital
Tbilisi was designated as the World Book Capital for 2021 by UNESCO.

Tourism
Georgia's growing popularity as an international tourist destination has put Tbilisi on the global travel map. With the country hosting more than 9 million international visitors in 2019, the capital saw major investments in the hospitality industry. It now is the leading tourist destination in the region, offering exquisite cityscapes, Art Deco, Russian, Eastern and Soviet architecture, national museums and galleries, cultural attractions, festivals, historical landmarks and exceptional, traditional Georgian cuisine along with a wide range of international restaurants. The city is well-known, due to its complicated history, as a melting pot of cultures, a diverse metropolis with a palette of attractions.

Main sights

Tbilisi has important landmarks and sightseeing locations. The Parliament and the government (State Chancellery) buildings of Georgia, the Supreme Court of Georgia, the Sameba Cathedral, the Vorontsov's Palace (also known as the Children's Palace today), the National Public Library of the Parliament of Georgia, the National Bank of Georgia, Tbilisi Circus, The Bridge of Peace, and many state museums are in Tbilisi. During the Soviet times, Tbilisi continuously ranked in the top four cities in the Soviet Union for the number of museums.

Out of the city's historic landmarks, the most notable are the Narikala fortress (4th–17th century), Anchiskhati Basilica (6th century, built up in the 16th century), Sioni Cathedral (8th century, later rebuilt), and Church of Metekhi, Open Air Museum of Ethnography, Sulfur Bath, and Tbilisi Old City.

Nightlife
Beyond traditional attractions, Tbilisi has developed burgeoning nightclub culture which started to attract international media attention in the 2010s. The leading clubs such as Bassiani, Mtkvarze, Khidi, and Café Gallery have featured major international DJs as well as local performers. Due to the growing queer nightlife scene the city is also home to several underground LGBTQ+ venues.

Economy
With a nominal GDP of 32 billion Georgian lari (€10 billion) in 2022, Tbilisi is the economic center of the country, generating more than half of Georgia's GDP. Its GDP per capita of 26,769 Georgian lari (€8,700) is exceeding the national average by more than 50 percent. The service sector itself is dominated by the wholesale and retail trade sector, reflecting the role of Tbilisi as transit and logistics hub for the country and the South Caucasus. The manufacturing sector contributes only 12 percent to Tbilisi's GDP, but is much larger, by employment and total value added, than the manufacturing sectors in any other region of Georgia. The unemployment rate in Tbilisi is – with 22.5 percent – significantly higher in Tbilisi than in the regions.

Transport
The public transport system and the relevant infrastructure in Tbilisi is primarily managed by the Transport and Urban Development Agency. After decades of poor transport services and the prioritization of private vehicles, the city has invested heavily in developing a green, extensive and diverse public transit network since the 2010s. Today, the city is served by an international airport, metro and national rail services, municipal buses, minibuses, cabs, cable cars, bike lanes and a funicular.

Airport
Shota Rustaveli Tbilisi International Airport is Tbilisi's only international airport, located about 18 km southeast of the city center. Handling 2.99 million passengers in 2022, it is the busiest airport in Georgia and the twentieth busiest airport in the former Soviet Union. The airport has been rapidly growing over the past decade, handling more than 3.56 million passengers in 11 months of 2018. It is a hub for the national carrier Georgian Airways and Georgian-Chinese start-up Myway Airlines. Various international carriers serve routes to major European and Asian hubs, such as London, Munich, Berlin, Amsterdam, Dubai, Brussels, Milan, Vienna, Paris, and Doha. The Irish ultra-low-cost carrier Ryanair started operating from the airport in 2019.

Tbilisi International Airport in 2016 started to utilize solar energy and became the first "green airport" in the Caucasus region in 2008.

Natakhtari Airfield, located 33 km north of Tbilisi in the town of Natakhtari, is a domestic airport serving the capital on routes to Batumi, Mestia and Ambrolauri.

Metro
The Tbilisi Metro serves the city with rapid transit subway services. More than 400,000 journeys are made on the system every single day. It was the Soviet Union's fourth metro system. Construction began in 1952 and was finished in 1966. The system operates two lines, the Akhmeteli-Varketili Line and the Saburtalo Line. It has 23 stations and 186 metro cars. Most stations, characteristic to Soviet-built metro systems, are extravagantly decorated. Trains run from 6:00 am to midnight. Due to the uneven ground, the rail lines run above ground in some areas. Two of the stations are above ground.

In 2020, it was announced by the city government that the metro system is set for a major upgrade with the renovation of all stations, targeting more sustainable and modern design, as well as step-free wheelchair accessibility. Moreover, Tbilisi will purchase 40 new, modern train cars, or 10 trains, becoming the first major rolling stock upgrade in the network's more than 50-year-old history.

The third overground line is planned to connect central Tbilisi with suburbs and Tbilisi International Airport with a possible extension to Rustavi, 30 km east of Tbilisi.

Rail
Tbilisi is the busiest intersection of Georgian Railways services, primarily centred within Tbilisi Central Railway Station. From there, the national rail operator offers inter-city services to Batumi, Zugdidi, Poti, Ozurgeti, Kutaisi and other large cities, as well as several suburban rail services.

Buses
Tbilisi's bus network forms a crucial backbone of the city's transit system. For almost a decade, up to 700 outdated buses of various size were serving the city, majority of them were Ukrainian Bogdan A144 and A092 models. Nowadays the city has an extensive network of municipal buses, including a growing number of night bus services. In August 2020, the mayor of Tbilisi Kakha Kaladze announced major changes in the existing public transit system. Notably, the city will have 10 Bus Rapid Transit corridors in the near future, served by large 18-meter-long buses running at significantly shorter intervals. These services are named TBT (Tbilisi Bus Transit) lines and are indexed numbers from 300 until 310. Besides the TBT lines, the new system includes 44 city and 185 local lines, totalling up to over 240 bus routes within the city.

The initial reorganization of the bus network started in 2016 when then-mayor Davit Narmania started an ambitious project in efforts to revamp the outdated fleet. Under his city government, 143 energy-efficient MAN Lion's City buses were purchased and delivered in 2017. Later, in 2018, a tender was announced to order 90 new buses. Tegeta Truck & Bus won the tender and delivered 90 Man Lion's City low floor buses to the city in early 2019. Later on, the city purchased more than 400 new buses from two different manufacturers, including 12-meter-long, low floor BMC vehicles and shorter, 8.5-meter-long Isuzu city buses. It was also announced that the city will buy 200 18-meter-long articulated buses in the near future in hopes of further expanding the city's bus network and decreasing intervals.

Cycling
Cycling has become increasingly popular among the residents of Tbilisi over the past few years. For decades, this green mode of transport was seen unfit for the mountainous and uneven terrain of the city. However, as the city's government started introducing new bike lanes across the city, a rising number of people turned towards bikes for regular use. One of the first major central Tbilisi bike lanes opened along Pekini Avenue in 2017, following a long rehabilitation process. The 2.8 meter wide lane failed to attract regular users amid the lack of a greater, city-wide network. Soon the city unveiled more bike lanes, including within recreational areas, such as the National Botanical Garden of Georgia and Lisi Lake.

The expansion of the city's cycling infrastructure network was significantly accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic as cities across the globe started organizing pop-up bike lanes. Tbilisi joined the global trend, unveiling cycling lanes in city's central areas, such as Vake, Vera and the bank of the Kura River. Following these changes, the total length of Tbilisi's bike lanes increased from 2 km in 2019 to over 20 km in 2020. The head of the city's transport department told Euronews Georgia that Tbilisi is working on a 20-year long urban mobility development strategy. According to the plan, the total length of the bike lane network will eventually reach 350 km across the capital.

Tram
Tbilisi had a tram network starting in 1883 with horse-driven trams, followed by electric trams in 1904. After the Soviet Union disintegrated, due to electricity deficit the electric transport went into decline, and finally the only tram line left was closed on 4 December 2006, along with the two remaining trolleybus lines. There were plans to construct a modern tram network.

Minibus
For a long time, the most dominant form of transport was the minibus network. An elaborate minibus system grew in Tbilisi over the early 2000s. Amid the lack of public funding and rundown infrastructure, minibuses emerged as a private initiative and a short-term solution to the city's transportation problem. In 2019, the company operating yellow minibuses in Tbilisi was asked to replace the entire fleet by the end of 2020. However, the process was slowed down and only 300 minibuses were replaced. The mayor of Tbilisi announced that the number of minibuses in Tbilisi will gradually decrease, eventually vanishing from Tbilisi's streets.

In addition to the city, several lines also serve the surrounding countryside of Tbilisi. Throughout the city, a fixed price is paid regardless of the distance (80 or 50 tetri in 2018). For longer trips outside the city, higher fares are common. As of April 2018, there are no predefined stops for the minibus lines, except 14 streets; they are hailed from the streets like taxis and each passenger can exit whenever they prefer.

Aerial tramways
Historically, the city had seven different aerial tramways, but many of them closed after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Since 2012, Tbilisi has a modern, high-capacity gondola lift which operates between Rike Park and the Narikala fortress; each gondola can carry up to eight persons. The system was built by the Italian manufacturer Leitner Ropeways.

On 12 October 2016 the Turtle Lake aerial tramway (originally opened in 1965) reopened after seven years out of service. It underwent major reconstruction but kept the old designs of gondolas and stations. This tramway connects Vake Park with Turtle Lake.

On 19 April 2021 another Soviet-era aerial tramway between the State University (Maglivi) and the University Campus (Bagebi) in Saburtalo District (originally opened in 1982) was opened after reconstruction works took place in 2016–2018. The original Italian cabins, produced by Lovisolo and provided by Ceretti & Tanfani, with a capacity of 40 passengers each, were kept, as were the stations.

In 1990, one of the main aerial trams experienced a major malfunction, causing the 1990 Tbilisi aerial tramway accident and remaining closed ever since. Since October 2017, the aerial tram has been under reconstruction, keeping the old culturally significant lower station but with plans for new gondolas, masts, upper station and other infrastructure. The project is carried out by Doppelmayr Garaventa Group.

Funicular
The Tbilisi funicular reopened in 2012 after a multi-year closure. It is a ropeway railway first built in 1905, connecting Chonkadze Street and Mtatsminda Park, and covering almost 300 m in altitude difference. The top of the hill is the highest point of the city, offering many different views of Tbilisi, and is home to the Tbilisi TV Broadcasting Tower as well as some amusement rides, including a rollercoaster and a ferris wheel.

The half-way station of the funicular is located near the Mtatsminda Pantheon, providing easy access to the necropolis.

Education

Tbilisi is home to several major institutions of higher education, including the Tbilisi State Medical University and the Petre Shotadze Tbilisi Medical Academy, famous for their internationally recognized medical education systems. The biggest Georgian university is Tbilisi State University (TSU), which was established on 8 February 1918. TSU is the oldest university in the whole Caucasus region, with up to 25,000 students enrolled and approximately 5,000 faculty members and staff (collaborators). Tbilisi is also home to the largest medical university in the Caucasus region – Tbilisi State Medical University, which was founded as the Tbilisi Medical Institute in 1918 and became the Faculty of Medicine within the Tbilisi State University in 1930. Tbilisi State Medical Institute was renamed to Medical University in 1992. Since it operates as an independent educational institution, it has become one of the highest-ranking state-supported institutions of higher education in the Caucasus region. As of 2023, there are over 7,000 undergraduate and 3,000 postgraduate students at the university, of whom about a quarter come from foreign countries.

Georgia's main and largest technical university, Georgian Technical University, is in Tbilisi. It was founded in 1922 as a polytechnic faculty of the Tbilisi State University. The first lecture was read by world-famous Georgian mathematician Professor Andria Razmadze. It was transformed into an independent institute in 1928, until it was finally granted University status in 1990.

Three of the most popular private higher educational institutions in Georgia – The University of Georgia (Tbilisi), Caucasus University, and the Free University of Tbilisi – are in Tbilisi. The University of Georgia (Tbilisi) is the largest private University in Georgia, with more than 8,000 international and local students. Soon after its establishment, it became a market leader within the Georgian educational sector. In 2010, the UG received financing from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) for the development of the university's infrastructure and technical equipment. The University of Georgia has various undergraduate and graduate programs, and it was the first Georgian university to offer international certificate programs of the Oracle Corporation, Microsoft, Zend Technologies and Cisco Academy.

Caucasus University was established in 2004 as an expansion of the Caucasus School of Business (CSB, established in 1998) by a consortium consisting of Tbilisi State University and Georgian Technical University in partnership with Georgia State University (Atlanta, USA).

The Free University of Tbilisi was established in 2007 through a merger of two higher education schools: the European School of Management (ESM-Tbilisi) and the Tbilisi Institute of Asia and Africa (TIAA), both of which then became schools within the university. Aside from that, the Free University now comprises six other schools — Law School, Governance and Social Sciences, Visual Arts and Design (VAADS), Mathematics and Computer Science (MACS), Physics, and Doctoral School in Social and Humanitarian Sciences — that deliver academic programs at the undergraduate, graduate and doctorate levels. In addition, Free University conducts a wide array of short-term courses and runs several research centers and summer school programs.

Higher educational institutions in Tbilisi:

 * Tbilisi State University
 * Ilia State University
 * Georgian Technical University
 * Tbilisi State Conservatory
 * Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Film University
 * Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University
 * Tbilisi State Academy of Arts
 * The University of Georgia (Tbilisi)
 * Tbilisi State Medical University
 * Caucasus University
 * Caucasus International University
 * Tbilisi Medical Academy
 * Free University of Tbilisi
 * Grigol Robakidze University – Alma Mater
 * Georgian American University
 * International Black Sea University
 * Georgian Institute of Public Affairs
 * Agricultural University of Georgia
 * International School of Economics (ISET)
 * The University of Geomedi
 * New Vision University

Expatriate community
Tbilisi is home to many foreigners. The number of foreigners living and working in Tbilisi has risen in recent years together with the openings of international schools, businesses, expatriate communities, and online networks. Tbilisi is a very safe city. Most of the expatriates live in Vake, Vera, Saburtalo, and Dighomi.

 * IWA, the International Women Association, is a non-profit organization founded in 1996; its members and participants are international and Georgian women.
 * Expats in Tbilisi was an online support network founded by UN and EU staff spouses in Georgia to support expatriates in finding information and all relevant resources in one place.
 * Inter-nation International

Twin towns and sister cities
Tbilisi is twinned with:

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Tbilisi


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Arity

In logic, mathematics, and computer science, arity is the number of arguments or operands taken by a function, operation or relation. In mathematics, arity may also be called rank, but this word can have many other meanings. In logic and philosophy, arity may also be called adicity and degree. In linguistics, it is usually named valency.

Examples
In general, functions or operators with a given arity follow the naming conventions of n-based numeral systems, such as binary and hexadecimal. A Latin prefix is combined with the -ary suffix. For example:
 * A nullary function takes no arguments.
 * Example: $$f=2$$
 * A unary function takes one argument.
 * Example: $$f(x)=2x$$
 * A binary function takes two arguments.
 * Example: $$f(x,y)=2xy$$
 * A ternary function takes three arguments.
 * Example: $$f(x,y,z)=2xyz$$
 * An n-ary function takes n arguments.
 * Example: $f(x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n)=2\prod_{i=1}^n x_i$

Nullary
A constant can be treated as the output of an operation of arity 0, called a nullary operation.

Also, outside of functional programming, a function without arguments can be meaningful and not necessarily constant (due to side effects). Such functions may have some hidden input, such as global variables or the whole state of the system (time, free memory, etc.).

Unary
Examples of unary operators in mathematics and in programming include the unary minus and plus, the increment and decrement operators in C-style languages (not in logical languages), and the successor, factorial, reciprocal, floor, ceiling, fractional part, sign, absolute value, square root (the principal square root), complex conjugate (unary of "one" complex number, that however has two parts at a lower level of abstraction), and norm functions in mathematics. In programming the two's complement, address reference, and the logical NOT operators are examples of unary operators.

All functions in lambda calculus and in some functional programming languages (especially those descended from ML) are technically unary, but see n-ary below.

According to Quine, the Latin distributives being singuli, bini, terni, and so forth, the term "singulary" is the correct adjective, rather than "unary". Abraham Robinson follows Quine's usage.

In philosophy, the adjective monadic is sometimes used to describe a one-place relation such as 'is square-shaped' as opposed to a two-place relation such as 'is the sister of'.

Binary
Most operators encountered in programming and mathematics are of the binary form. For both programming and mathematics, these include the multiplication operator, the radix operator, the often omitted exponentiation operator, the logarithm operator, the addition operator, and the division operator. Logical predicates such as OR, XOR, AND, IMP are typically used as binary operators with two distinct operands. In CISC architectures, it is common to have two source operands (and store result in one of them).

Ternary
The computer programming language C and its various descendants (including C++, C#, Java, Julia, Perl, and others) provide the ternary conditional operator. The first operand (the condition) is evaluated, and if it is true, the result of the entire expression is the value of the second operand, otherwise it is the value of the third operand.

The Python language has a ternary conditional expression, x if C else y. In Elixir the equivalent would be, if(C, do: x, else: y).

The Forth language also contains a ternary operator,, which multiplies the first two (one-cell) numbers, dividing by the third, with the intermediate result being a double cell number. This is used when the intermediate result would overflow a single cell.

The Unix dc calculator has several ternary operators, such as, which will pop three values from the stack and efficiently compute $x^y \bmod z$  with arbitrary precision.

Many (RISC) assembly language instructions are ternary (as opposed to only two operands specified in CISC); or higher, such as, which will load (MOV) into register AX the contents of a calculated memory location that is the sum (parenthesis) of the registers BX and CX.

n-ary
From a mathematical point of view, a function of n arguments can always be considered as a function of a single argument that is an element of some product space. However, it may be convenient for notation to consider n-ary functions, as for example multilinear maps (which are not linear maps on the product space, if n ≠ 1).

The same is true for programming languages, where functions taking several arguments could always be defined as functions taking a single argument of some composite type such as a tuple, or in languages with higher-order functions, by currying.

Varying arity
In computer science, a function that accepts a variable number of arguments is called variadic. In logic and philosophy, predicates or relations accepting a variable number of arguments are called multigrade, anadic, or variably polyadic.

Terminology
Latinate names are commonly used for specific arities, primarily based on Latin distributive numbers meaning "in group of n", though some are based on Latin cardinal numbers or ordinal numbers. For example, 1-ary is based on cardinal unus, rather than from distributive singulī that would result in singulary.

n-ary means having n operands (or parameters), but is often used as a synonym of "polyadic".

These words are often used to describe anything related to that number (e.g., undenary chess is a chess variant with an 11×11 board, or the Millenary Petition of 1603).

The arity of a relation (or predicate) is the dimension of the domain in the corresponding Cartesian product. (A function of arity n thus has arity n+1 considered as a relation.)

In computer programming, there is often a syntactical distinction between operators and functions; syntactical operators usually have arity 1, 2, or 3 (the ternary operator ?: is also common). Functions vary widely in the number of arguments, though large numbers can become unwieldy. Some programming languages also offer support for variadic functions, i.e., functions syntactically accepting a variable number of arguments.

title: Arity


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Augusto Boal

Augusto Boal (16 March 1931 – 2 May 2009) was a Brazilian theatre practitioner, drama theorist, and political activist. He was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form originally used in radical left popular education movements. Boal served one term as a Vereador (the Brazilian equivalent of a city councillor) in Rio de Janeiro from 1993 to 1997, where he developed legislative theatre.

Early life
Augusto Boal studied at Columbia University in New York with the critic John Gassner. Gassner introduced Boal to the techniques of both Bertolt Brecht and Konstantin Stanislavski, and encouraged Boal to form links with theatre groups like the Black Experimental Theatre. In 1955 Boal staged productions of two of his own plays, The Horse and the Saint and The House Across the Street. In 1956, shortly after graduating, Boal was asked to work with the Arena Theatre in São Paulo, southeast Brazil. Boal was in charge of directing plays along with other dramaturgs such as José Renato, who was also the founder of the Arena Theatre. It was here that he began to experiment with new forms of theatre never before seen in Brazil, such as Stanislavski's 'system' for actors, with which he became familiar during his time at Columbia and when involved with the Actors Studio in New York. Boal adapted these methods to social conditions in Brazil, taking a leftist approach on issues concerning nationalism, which were very much in vogue at that time period since the country had just undergone a long period of military dictatorship.

Work at the Arena Theatre of São Paulo
While working at the Arena Theatre in São Paulo, Boal directed a number of classical dramas, which he transformed to make them more pertinent to Brazilian society and its economy. Among these plays was John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, known in Brazil as Ratos e Homens. This was Boal's first performance as a director at the Arena Theatre of São Paulo. Critics acclaimed this piece and Boal won the Prêmio de Revelação de Direção (Direction Revelation Award) from the Association of Art Critics of São Paulo, in 1956. In the early sixties, the ratings at the Arena Theatre of São Paulo started to drop, almost causing the theatre to go bankrupt. Consequently, the company decided to start investing in national theatre (pieces written by Brazilian dramaturgs) as a move that could possibly save it from bankruptcy. The new investment proved to be a success, opening up the path for a national theatre scene. Boal then suggested the creation of a Seminar in Dramaturgy at the Arena Theatre, which was quickly implemented and soon became a national platform for many young playwrights. Many successful productions were born from this Seminar and now form part of the Arena Theatre of São Paulo's nationalist phase repertoire. One of these productions was Chapetuba Futebol Clube, written by Oduvaldo Vianna Filho in 1959 and directed by Augusto Boal.

Exile
A new military regime started in Brazil in 1964 with a coup d'état supported by the Brazilian elite, the industrialists, the military, as well as by the United States, Boal's teachings were controversial, and as a cultural activist he was seen as a threat by the Brazilian military regime. In 1971, Boal was kidnapped off the street, arrested, tortured, and eventually exiled to Argentina, where he stayed for five years. During those five years, Boal published two books: Torquemada (1971) and his much acclaimed Theatre of the Oppressed (1973). Torquemada is about the Brazilian military regime's systematic use of torture in prison. Boal takes the name of the leading figure of the Spanish Inquisition, Tomas de Torquemada, as an example of historical forms of systematic torture. In Theatre of the Oppressed Boal develops a theatrical method based on Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a book by the Brazilian educator and writer Paulo Freire (who was also a good friend of Boal).

Boal's method (which has been implemented in various communities around the world) seeks to transform audiences into active participants in the theatrical experience. Boal argues that traditional theatre is oppressive since spectators usually do not get a chance to express themselves and that a collaboration between both parties, in contrast, allows spectators to perform actions that are socially liberating. The method, as Boal liked to explain, seeks to transform spectators into "spect-actors." When the political climate in Brazil forced Boal into exile in 1971, he initially went to Peru and then Argentina, where he completed and published his seminal theoretical work The Theatre of the Oppressed and consolidated his conscientização (consciousness-raising) theatre work based on the idea of Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire. Freire's methods were a revolt against the elitist "top-down" approach to education and he advocated critical-awareness-based education models. Boal's work in Peru with the ALFIN project, a movement which sought to use a range of languages including "artistic languages" to eradicate illiteracy, developed his ideas and methodology away from the agit-prop of his Brazilian Arena Theatre days and sought to engage theatre as a pedagogical tool. Crucial to this time was Boal's attempts to break down the divisions between spectator and actor. It is around this time that invented the term "spect-actor", a term that he saw as establishing the frameworks within which he wished to work. He saw that the passivity of the spectator could be broken down by the following steps by which the spectator becomes the spect-actor:

 * Knowing the body (by body he means both the individual "body" and the collective "body" in a Marxist sense)
 * Making the body expressive
 * Using theatre as a language
 * Using theatre as discourse

After living in Argentina, Boal travelled to other countries in South America such as Peru and Ecuador, where he worked with people in small and usually poor communities that dealt with conflicts such as civil wars and lack of government attention. Boal was of the opinion that only the oppressed are able to free the oppressed. In Peru, Boal practiced his Forum theatre method, in which spectator replaces actor to determine the solution to a given problem presented by the actor, which can also be a real problem someone in the community is facing. Boal also lived in Paris, France, for a number of years, where he created several Centers for the Theatre of the Oppressed, directed plays, and also taught classes at the Sorbonne University. Boal created the first International Festival for the Theatre of the Oppressed in 1981.

While Boal was in exile, his very close friend and Brazilian musician Chico Buarque wrote him a letter that would later result in the Chorinho hit called "Meu Caro Amigo" or "My Dear Friend" (1976). In this song, Buarque tells his friend about the situation in Brazil at the time, addressing the military dictatorship in a very subtle but clever way (due to censorship issues, many artists could not express themselves freely). The melody of the song is very happy and upbeat while the lyrics explain:

"My dear friend, please forgive me, if I can’t pay you a visit, but since I found someone to carry a message, I’m sending you news on this tape. Here we play football, there’s lots of samba, lots of choro and rock’n'roll. Some days it rains, some days it’s sunny but I want to tell you that things here are pretty dark. Here, we’re wheeling and dealing for survival, and we’re only surviving because we’re stubborn. And everyone’s drinking because without cachaça, nobody survives this squeeze."

Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed-CTO-Brazil
After the fall of the military dictatorship, Boal returned to Brazil after 14 years of exile in 1986. He established a major Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro (CTO), whose objective was to study, discuss and express issues concerning citizenship, culture and various forms of oppression using theatrical language. Boal's work in the CTO made way for the approval of a new law that protects crime victims and witnesses in Brazil. Boal's group has worked next to numerous organizations that fight for human rights. In 1992, Boal ran for city councillor in Rio de Janeiro as a theatrical act, and he was elected. Boal's support staff was his theatre group, with whom he quickly developed various legislative proposals. His objective was to work out issues citizens might be facing in their communities through theatre and also to discuss the laws of the city of Rio with people on the streets. After having worked to transform spectator into author in Theatre of the Oppressed, Boal initiates the legislative theatre movement process, in which voter becomes legislator. Boal is known to say that he did not create laws arbitrarily while he was city councillor. Instead, he asked people what they wanted. Other politicians were not very fond of this. Out of 40 of Boal's proposed laws, only 13 got approved during his term as councillor of Rio de Janeiro. His term ended in 1996, but he continued performing legislative theatre acts with different groups in Brasília, where four more laws got approved even after Boal had left. Boal also worked with prisoners in Rio and São Paulo. Boal argued that people in prison are not free in space, but that they are in time, and that the Theatre of the Oppressed strives to create different types of freedom so that people are able to imagine and think about the past, the present, and invent the future instead of having to wait for it. All this was in order for prisoners to have "a healthier and more creative lifestyle." People in the Movimento sem Terra or Landless Workers Movement of Brazil also experienced working with Boal's theatre methods. Boal's son Julián worked along with his father and now continues to take the Theatre of the Oppressed to various communities in Brazil and around the world. In March 2009, he received the title of "World Theatre Ambassador" from UNESCO.

Death
Augusto Boal died on 2 May 2009 at the age of 78 in Rio de Janeiro. Critic Yan Michalski argues that Augusto Boal is the best-known and most respected Brazilian theatre practitioner abroad.

Influences
Most of Augusto Boal's techniques were created after he realized the limitations of didactic, politically motivated theatre in the poor areas where he worked. He found that his attempts to inspire the people living in poor or "slum" areas to rise up against racial and class inequality were inhibited by his own racial and class background, since he was white and comparatively financially comfortable, as well as his and his colleagues' inhibitions to perform violence themselves. His new techniques allowed the idea of rebellion and the impetus for change to come from within the target group. Much of his early work and teaching was inspired by Marxist philosophy, although much of his work now falls within the boundaries of a center-left ideology.

Paulo Freire was a major influence on Boal's teachings. He and Freire became close in later years. When Freire died, Boal said: "I am very sad. I have lost my last father. Now all I have are brothers and sisters".

Boal was also known to quote William Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which Hamlet argues that theatre is like a mirror that reflects our virtues and defects equally. Although Boal found this quote beautiful, he liked to think of theatre as a mirror in which one can reach in to change reality and to transform it.

Theatre of the Oppressed (London: Pluto Press, 1979)
Arguably Augusto Boal's most academically influential work  is the Theatre of the Oppressed, in which the reader follows Boal's detailed analysis of the Poetics of Aristotle and the early history of Western theatre. Boal contends that the Aristotelian ethic means oppressing the masses, the people, the workers and the spectators in favour of stability and the continued dominance of a privileged few. He argues that the Tragi-drama, a formulaic drama style that today could be considered similar to that of soap operas, helps the State promote its continued existence. He sees the Brazilian government as an example of an oppressive state using theatre to propagate its oppressive system. He then outlines his early theories and practices for attempting to reverse the paradigm. It also talks about Newspaper Theatre, attempting to talk about local problems and present it to the audiences, Forum Theatre, currently used in over 70 countries, Invisible Theatre, used to discuss political activity and Image Theatre. Theatre of the Oppressed has been translated to more than 25 languages over the years. Boal also talks about Invisible theatre in which an event is planned and scripted but does not allow the spectators to know that the event is happening. Actors perform out of the ordinary roles which invite spectators to join in or sit back and watch. One example was in a restaurant at the Chiclayo hotel, actors sat at separate tables and informed the waiters in loud voices that they could not eat the food. The actor stated that the food was not good. The waiter says the diner could pick something else to eat. So the actor chose a rather expensive item off the menu and says he will be able to pay for it. The actor mentions he has no money and he would be willing to work for it. This display made other diners start discussing the price and treatment of workers at this hotel. This act allowed spectators to think about issues that were going on but was brushed over because the issue did not directly involve them. Analytical theatre is when a participant tells a story and the actors improvise it. Each character is broken down into all the social roles they could follow and the participants choose an object to symbolize the role. This aspect of theatre allows the participants to see how there are multiple roles a person could follow.

Games For Actors and Non-Actors (London: Routledge, 1992; Second Edition 2002)
This is probably Augusto Boal's most practically influential book, in which he sets down a brief explanation of his theories, mostly through stories and examples of his work in Europe, and then explains every drama exercise that he has found useful in his practice. In contrast to Theatre of the Oppressed, it contains little academic theory and many practical examples for drama practitioners to use even if not practising theatre that is related to Boal's academic or political ideas. Boal refers to many of these as "gamesercises", as they combine the training and "introversion" of exercises with the fun and "extroversion" of games. It has been influential in the development of Community Theatre and Theatre in Education (T.I.E.) practices worldwide, especially in Europe and South America. These games include Carnival in Rio and Your Friend is Dead.

The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy. (London: Routledge, 1995)
This book re-evaluates the practices commonly associated with the Theatre of the Oppressed for a new purpose. It has been argued that Boal contradicts himself with this take on his work, as it mostly concerns itself with creating harmony within society, whereas his early work was concerned with rebellion and upheaval. Boal states that, "Theatre is the passionate combat of two human beings on a platform." However, Boal's works can be seen as a progression and exploration of a Left Wing world view rather than a unified theory. In the context of those under-represented in a society, his methodology can be used as a weapon against oppressors. In the context of those in a society who are in need of catharsis for the sake of their own integration into it, it can be switched round to empower that individual to break down internal oppressions that separate that individual from society. Through his work at French institutions for the mentally ill and elsewhere in Europe, where he discovered concepts such as the "Cop in the Head", the theories presented in this book have been useful in the pioneering field of drama therapy and have been applied by drama practitioners. Boal states in his work that there are three properties of the aesthetic space. First, is plasticity. He says that one can be without being. Objects can acquire different meaning such as an old chair representing a king's throne. He states that only duration counts and location can be changed. Second, is that the aesthetic space is dichotomic and it creates dichotomy. This idea suggests that there is a space within a space. The stage is in front of the audience and the actor is creating his own space. Third, is telemicroscopic. This idea creates the idea that it is impossible to hide on stage. Every aspect of the space is seen and it makes the far away close-up.

Other books

 * Legislative Theatre: Using Performance to Make Politics. London: Routledge, 1998.
 * Hamlet and the Baker's Son: My Life in Theatre and Politics. London: Routledge, 2001.tate
 * The Aesthetics of the Oppressed. London: Routledge, 2006.

Recognition
In 1994, Boal won the UNESCO Pablo Picasso Medal, and in August 1997, he was awarded the "Career Achievement Award" by the Association of Theatre in Higher Education at their national conference in Chicago, Illinois. Boal is also seen as the inspiration behind 21st-century forms of performance-activism, such as the "Optative Theatrical Laboratories".

Boal received The Cross Border Award for Peace and Democracy by Dundalk Institute of Technology in 2008. Boal has in many ways influenced many artists in new media with his participatory modes of expression, especially as the World Wide Web has become such a powerful tool for participation and communication. Notable examples include Learning to Love You More, happenings, and Steve Lambert's Why They Hate US.

title: Augusto Boal