Pictures of mysterious underground city of Soviet-era

Hidden beneath the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia is a whole other world—or rather, a time capsule of the Soviet era. It's a world that photographer Davit Tabagari discovered during spring 2021 and that has fascinated him ever since. A fan of photography since childhood, he's been using his passion to document the historic underground shelters in Tbilisi.

In 1921, the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic was formed and then incorporated into the Soviet Union. Though Georgia declared independence in 1991, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, there are still plenty of traces of Soviet history to be found. This includes an extensive underground city and a system of tunnels. Tabagari started exploring some of the over 400 underground shelters in Tbilisi by simply using street-level entrances that most people walk by without noticing.