Chișinău

Chișinău was founded in 1436 as a monastery village in the Principality of Moldavia, which from the 16th century was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. In 1812 the Ottomans ceded the eastern half of Moldavia to the Russian Empire, and Chișinău grew as the capital of tsarist Bessarabia. The Swiss-Italian architect Alexander Bernardazzi designed many of its public buildings, including the City Hall, and the Nativity Cathedral was finished in 1836. By 1897 almost half the population, more than 50,000 people, was Jewish. In April 1903 the city became known worldwide for the Kishinev pogrom, an anti-Jewish riot that drew protests from abroad, including a petition to the Tsar from US President Theodore Roosevelt.

Between the two world wars the city belonged to Romania, and its centre was extensively renovated. In June 1940 the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia and made Chișinău capital of the new Moldavian SSR; deportations and executions followed, and a severe earthquake struck that November. Romanian and German forces took the city in July 1941 and confined its Jews in a ghetto; most of those deported from it died. The Red Army recaptured Chișinău in August 1944.

The Soviet administration rebuilt it as a planned capital of Stalinist palaces and, from 1971, a vast programme of housing estates; three quarters of today's homes date from 1951–1990. Another earthquake hit in 1977. Since independence in 1991 many streets have been renamed from Communist themes to national ones, the cathedral bell tower has been rebuilt, and the airport has returned to state ownership and taken the name of the composer Eugen Doga.

As the capital, Chișinău holds most of the country's cultural institutions: the national opera and ballet, founded in the mid-1940s and named in 2012 after the soprano Maria Bieșu, the national theatres, the state university and the three national museums of history, fine arts and ethnography and natural history, the last founded in 1889 and the oldest museum in Moldova. Alexander Pushkin's stay here in exile in 1820–23 is remembered in a small house-museum.

The city's identity reflects competing histories, and the large-scale renaming of streets after independence, from Communist themes to national ones, was a deliberate statement. Monuments record the competing memories: the statue of Stephen the Great at the park gate, the Triumphal Arch built for a Russian victory, the Soviet war memorial, and, on Jerusalem Street, a monument of 1993 to the Jews killed in the wartime ghetto.

Wine is central to local pride. The national wine festival is held in the capital every October, and the great cellars of Cricova and Mileștii Mici lie just outside the city. On 1 March people give and wear the red-and-white tokens of Mărțișor to welcome spring, and the Orthodox calendar shapes the year for many families.

The 2024 census counted just over 567,000 people in the city proper and about 720,000 in the wider municipality, which takes in nearby towns and villages; nearly a third of Moldova's population lives in the metropolitan area. The city is divided into five sectors — Centru, Buiucani, Rîșcani, Botanica and Ciocana — and most people live in the Soviet-era apartment blocks that make up the bulk of its housing.

Chișinău is the country's main industrial and commercial centre and its most prosperous place, and it holds the government, the universities and the head offices of most businesses. The airport is the base of the airlines FlyOne and HiSky and a hub for Wizz Air, and the city is the country's largest transport hub.

Most residents get about by trolleybus, on which conductors still walk the aisle collecting fares, or by the cheap taxis ordered through the big dispatch services. Private car numbers keep rising — they were expected to pass 550,000 by 2025 — and traffic grows more congested each year. The large parks, from Valea Morilor to the Botanical Garden, are where the city goes to walk and run.

The capital eats like the rest of the country. Mămăligă, a cornmeal porridge, is the best-known dish, served with brânză, a brined cheese. Zeamă, a chicken soup, is a standby, and friptură is a lamb or goat stew. Holiday tables bring sarmale, cabbage rolls stuffed with minced meat, and a spread of baked goods with cheese, fruit, vegetable and walnut fillings — plăcinte, cozonac, pască and papanași among them.

Piața Centrală, the Central Market, covers more than two city blocks and is the place to see what is in season: fresh produce and the marinated and pickled vegetables that can make a quick meal in themselves. Cheap places serving blini, thin pancakes, and zeamă are found across the city.

Local wine accompanies most meals. Moldova produces large quantities of sparkling wine, the best known from the Cricova winery on the city's edge, and Fetească Albă, a white grape cultivated here since ancient times, is used in still and sparkling wines. Divin, the Moldovan brandy, is the stronger drink, while compot, made from boiled fruit, and kvas, fermented from toasted rye bread, are the traditional non-alcoholic choices.