Landlocked between Romania and Ukraine, Moldova is among Europe's least visited and most underrated countries. Underground wine cities, a breakaway state and some of the strangest politics on the continent. Here is your guide.
Hard for many folks to locate on a map, Moldova is, unjustifiably Europe’s most overlooked country by almost any measure: the least visited, among the poorest by GDP per capita, and rarely the subject of a headline that isn’t about politics.
It’s also a small, green, wine-blessed country wedged between Romania and Ukraine, with some of the strangest unresolved political disputes in the world sitting in and around its own borders. A Turkic Orthodox Christian minority governing its own autonomous region in the south, a breakaway unrecognised state to the east.
Plus, some of the most remarkable underground infrastructure anywhere in Europe.
For those of you who’ve exhausted the continent’s obvious stops, as well as those looking for something fascinating and undeniably worthwhile, Moldova is close to as far off the map as Europe still gets.
Geography and the Basics of Moldova
A Brief History of Moldova
People, Language, and Culture
What to See Beyond the Capital
Practical Information
Why Visit Moldova
Geography and the Basics of Moldova
Moldova is a landlocked country, roughly the size of Belgium, which sits between Romania to the west and Ukraine, to the north, east, and south. The capital and largest city is Chișinău.
The country’s defining physical feature is more subtle than most; the soil and climate have made it one of the most vine-dense countries on the planet by proportion of land under cultivation and this is visible to anyone travelling through the country at any time of year.
Politically, the country itself and the territory claimed by the country, are complicated.
A strip of land on Moldova’s eastern edge, has functioned as a self-declared, unrecognised state since the early 1990s, and Gagauzia, an autonomous region in the south, governs itself under a special legal status granted in 1994. Both are covered in their own dedicated guides.
Together, they make Moldova a country you can visit for its capital, and then find three genuinely distinct additional destinations inside its own borders.
A Brief History of Moldova
Moldova’s territory has been fought over, annexed, and redrawn a tragically large amount of times.
Even setting aside the Roman period, the Romanian period, the middle ages and mediaeval times, the more recent centuries are complicated enough.
The Principality of Moldavia was absorbed as Bessarabia into the Russian Empire in 1812, briefly united with Romania after the First World War, and was then annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 as the Moldavian SSR, with a short but characteristically brutal interruption of Romanian and Axis control during the Second World War.
Moldova declared independence from the collapsing USSR in 1991, and Transnistria broke away in turn in the same year.
The decades since have been defined by a difficult balancing act between Romanian, Russian, and European interests and orientations, chronic poverty, and heavy emigration, alongside a more recent and decisive tilt toward Europe. Moldova was granted official EU candidate status in 2022 and has since opened formal accession negotiations, a process still ongoing and one which many hope will set the future stage for Moldovan politics, but which, as always, is complicated and uncertain.
People, Language, and Culture
Moldova’s population is largely Romanian-speaking with this being the official language (it is also referred to as ‘Moldovan’ but is indistinguishable from modern Romanian, the distinction is largely seen as a Russian-influenced political issue).
Russian remains widely spoken as a second language nationwide, and a first language for most people in many areas including Chișinău, and also the native language of most of the older generation too. This is of course a legacy of the Soviet period that’s still very much part of daily life, particularly in cities and in the country’s south and east.
Orthodox Christianity is the overwhelmingly dominant religion, practised across essentially all of Moldova’s ethnic communities, Gagauzia included.
Wine is the backbone of Moldovan culture, with a documented history stretching back thousands of years, and the industry remains central to both the economy and national identity, from village-level home production to vast wineries and subterranean vaults on a scale unknown elsewhere.
What to See Beyond the Capital
- Chișinău, the capital, is the natural base for any Moldova trip. See our dedicated guide for its sights, food, and practical details.
- Orheiul Vechi, about an hour northeast of Chișinău, is Moldova’s most striking natural and historical site: a dramatic limestone gorge on a bend of the Răut River. Home to a cave monastery, an active Orthodox community, and archaeological remains spanning various key nations in the region’s history including the Geto-Dacians, the Golden Horde, and medieval Moldavia. It’s a worthy day trip for any visitors.
- Cricova and Mileștii Mici, the giant underground wine cellars just outside Chișinău, are covered in detail in our own dedicated guide. Some of the most remarkable single attractions in Moldova.
- Transnistria and Gagauzia, both reachable as day trips or short overnights from Chișinău, turn a Moldova visit into something closer to three distinct destinations in one. A rare density of genuinely different political, cultural, and historical terrain for a country this small. See our separate guides to each.
Practical Information
- Citizens of around 100 countries, including the EU, UK, US, Canada, and Australia, can enter Moldova visa-free for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. We have a dedicated guide for the details, including the separate process for crossing into Transnistria/PMR.
- The national currency is the Moldovan leu (MDL); cash remains important outside Chișinău’s more upmarket establishments.
Why Visit Moldova
Moldova deserves to be better-known, but sadly rarely sells itself on the world stage as a tourism destination.
However, that’s precisely the appeal for the kind of traveller likely to end up here. It’s a small country carrying an outsized amount of fascinating history and is imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet all at once, and bordered by two self-governing territories that most people have never heard of, let alone visited.
Few countries this size and this close to the rest of Europe remain this unexplored.
That won’t, and shouldn’t, last forever.
Koryo Tours
Group Tours to Moldova & Transnistria
Share