Moldova Attractions: 13 Best Places to Visit and Things to Do in Moldova

The oldest park in the country was laid out in 1818 and covers about seven hectares in the very centre of the city. At its corner stands the monument to Stephen the Great, the 15th-century ruler of Moldavia: the sculptor Alexandru Plămădeală made it, and it was unveiled in 1928. During the Second World War the statue was taken out of the city twice and brought back each time. Inside the park, look for the Alley of Classics with busts of Romanian-language writers, and for the bust of Pushkin from 1885, the oldest surviving bust in the city.

Across Stephen the Great Boulevard from the park lies Cathedral Park, the main ensemble of the city. The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Nativity was built in 1830–1836 to a design by the architect Avraam Melnikov: a square building with four identical porticoes of Doric columns. In Soviet times it served as an exhibition hall, and services resumed in the 1990s. The bell tower beside it was demolished in the 1960s and rebuilt in 1998. The Triumphal Arch in front of the cathedral was put up around 1840 to mark the victory in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829. The square in front of the arch, Great National Assembly Square, is where the city holds concerts, fairs and National Wine Day.

The oldest museum in Moldova grew out of an agricultural and industrial exhibition held in 1889. Its building on Mihail Kogălniceanu Street, completed in 1905 to a design by Vladimir Țiganco, looks like an oriental palace and is worth seeing even from the outside. The permanent exhibition, "Nature. Human. Culture", takes you from fossils and stuffed animals to peasant costumes, carpets and village crafts; its best-known exhibit is the skeleton of a dinotherium, a prehistoric relative of the elephant found in Moldova. The museum courtyard has a small botanical garden with a vivarium. The official sites do not publish current hours, so check them before you go.

Alexander Pushkin arrived in Chișinău in September 1820, at the age of 21, sent into exile from St Petersburg, and lived in this single-storey house for several months. The museum opened in 1948. The small rooms display furniture and decorative objects of the time, prints and paintings, and editions of the poems he wrote in Bessarabia. A visit takes about half an hour and fits easily into a walk around the centre.

The town of Cricova lies about 15 kilometres north of Chișinău, and under it runs a real underground city. The galleries were once quarries for the limestone used to build Chișinău; in 1952 they became wine cellars. Today they stretch for 120 kilometres and lie up to 80 metres deep, and the streets are named after wines: Cabernet, Fetească, Aligoté. The National Collection kept here, begun in 1954, holds almost 1.3 million bottles. Cricova is on Moldova's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage status.

A winery founded in 1969, about 20 kilometres south of Chișinău. In 2005 Guinness World Records listed it as the largest wine collection in the world. The galleries, which the winery says run for more than 200 kilometres, are so long that visitors ride through them in vehicles rather than walking. The tour passes the Golden Collection, rows of bottles from different decades, and ends in an underground tasting hall.

A winery in the village of Bulboaca, about 40 kilometres from Chișinău, founded in 1893 by Constantin Mimi, a Bessarabian winemaker and politician. The long stone building was designed in the style of a French château; after years of decay it was restored and reopened in 2016, and it now has a hotel, restaurants and a garden by a pond. Even without the tour, the courtyard and the garden are pleasant for a walk at sunset.

One of the oldest monasteries in Moldova stands in the Codri forest, about 40 kilometres north-west of Chișinău. It is first mentioned in documents of the early 15th century, when it became a princely monastery under Alexander the Good, and later rulers, Stephen the Great and Petru Rareș among them, supported it. The stone Church of the Dormition holds the tomb of Metropolitan Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni, who first proposed building the cathedral in Chișinău. The monastery was closed in Soviet times and reopened in 1989. The road through the hills and the oak forest around the monastery are part of the reason to come.

An estate in the town of Hîncești, south-west of Chișinău, named after Manuc Bey, an Armenian merchant and diplomat. It was built in 1858–1861 by his descendants, after his death, in the spirit of French classicism. The ensemble includes the palace, a watchtower and a hunting lodge designed by the architect Alexander Bernardazzi. The estate was badly damaged in Soviet times and restored in 2013–2015 with EU support. Today it is open for guided tours and exhibitions, and the hunting lodge houses a museum of history and ethnography.

The most famous landscape in Moldova, about 45 minutes' drive from Chișinău. Here the Răut river makes a tight loop around a limestone promontory, and in the cliff above the water monks carved a cave monastery. It is still active, and visitors walk through a narrow passage into a rock-cut church. On top of the hill stand a white church with a bell tower and a stone cross, and from there the whole valley opens up. Around them archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a 14th-century Golden Horde town and medieval bathhouses. Below the promontory lies the village of Butuceni with its old houses and guesthouses where you can have lunch. The area is protected as the Orheiul Vechi cultural and natural reserve, and Moldova is seeking UNESCO World Heritage status for it. Allow at least three hours, and wear comfortable shoes: the paths are steep and stony.

A cave monastery on the right bank of the Dniester, carved into a cliff about 90 metres above the river. It includes three rock-cut churches dating from the 11th to the 18th centuries and more than 20 cells, passages and galleries. According to local tradition, Stephen the Great married here. Stone steps lead down to the monastery, and on the way you pass the Țipova waterfalls, so the visit is half a walk in nature. The descent and climb back are steep: allow a couple of hours and avoid it after heavy rain.

The Holy Trinity Monastery stands in a green gorge near the Dniester, in the same Rezina district as Țipova, and the two are usually visited on the same day. It is one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in Moldova: the church holds the relics of Saint Macarius. A path leads up to a rock on the cliff where, according to legend, a monk saw the Virgin Mary and found her footprint in the stone. Along the Saharna stream below the monastery there are small waterfalls and a trail through the gorge.

The farthest place on the list, in the town of Soroca on the Dniester, about 160 kilometres north of Chișinău. Stephen the Great built a wooden fort here in 1499 to guard the river crossing, and in 1543–1546 Petru Rareș rebuilt it in stone. The fortress is a perfect circle with five towers; its walls are more than three metres thick, and it rises 21 metres. It has been restored with EU support and is open to visitors. While in Soroca, go up to the Candle of Gratitude, a monument on the cliff above the town with a wide view of the Dniester, and walk past the large ornate houses on the hill where many of the town's Roma families live. In the cold season the fortress may open only by appointment, so check before you set off.