Giorgi Leonidze Park (Former Alexander Garden)

Ok, I just learnt this place is renamed after Georgian poet Giorgi Leonidze, although I most often call this park -  Alexander Garden. 

Parks of April 9 and Giorgi Leonidze (former Alexander Park) were cultivated in 1859 by the project of the architect O. Simenson. In 1865 the garden got its final form. It covered about 36.000 m2 areas. The garden was named in honour of the Emperor Alexander I. In the 30-eth of the XX century, after uniting the market and Dzneladze (present Tabukashvili) streets, the Alexander Park was divided into upper and lower platforms.

Monument to Giorgi Leonidze in Tbilisi

Monument to Giorgi Leonidze in Tbilisi

Giorgi Leonidze (December 27, 1899 – August 9, 1966) was a Georgian poet, prose writer, and literary scholar.

Leonidze was born in the village of Patardzeuli in the eastern Georgian province of Kakheti. He graduated from the Tbilisi Theological Seminary in 1918 and continued his studies at the Tbilisi State University. His first poems appeared in Georgian press in 1911, and then, briefly collaborated with the Symbolist group Blue Horns. His real talent emerged in 1925 with a series of nature lyrics, responding with Romantic animation to the landscapes of Leonidze’s native Kakheti. Throughout the Soviet period, he tried to pursue the "correct" political line; his poetry became more historical and patriotic, the eventful history of Georgia providing him with the colorful medieval imagery which Leonidze translated into impulsive rhythms and metaphors. He quickly established himself as one of the most popular poets of Georgia, but, when the purges of the 1930s took lives of many of his fellow writers and his own brother, microbiologist Leon Leonidze, he was forced to direct his talents into panegyrics to Joseph Stalin. This was an unfinished 1936 epic dedicated to Stalin’s childhood and youth, remarkable for its simulated verve and a total of absence of biographic details, factual or invented

For a short period of time we lived in this neighborhood back in 2012/2013 and I come here a lot, after wanderings at flea market I crossed Dry Bridge by foot and enjoyed lovely afternoon walk here.

Monument to the heroes of 1905 Revolution

Monument to the heroes of 1905 Revolution

At least that is written on the stone in Russian at the bottom. Numbers 1918 and 1921, makes me to think it's somehow related to the short lived 1st Republic of Georgia (1918-1921) as well.

View from the park

View from the park

On the right side building there is another interesting object you might want to put your step in - Old Hotel London

Giorgi Leonidze park in Tbilisi

Giorgi Leonidze park in Tbilisi

Location
41.698631, 44.799811