This project examines how modernity was experienced in mid-19th-century Russian Tiflis through the material history of a hybrid building that housed both the region’s first European proscenium theatre and a multi-story trading facility. Commissioned by the tsarist government to civilize “Oriental” locals, the “theatre-caravanserai” became a contested space where imperial agents, merchants, performers, and intelligentsias of various ethnic backgrounds negotiated art, economy, and public life.