Iași

People lived on the hills around Iași long before the town: Cucuteni–Trypillia farmers in the Neolithic, and settlements of the 6th to 10th centuries on the site of the later princely court. The city's name may come from the Iazyges or the Alanic Jassi; the Hungarian Jászvásár means "Jassic market". It is first named in a document of 1408, a grant of trading privileges by Prince Alexander the Good to merchants from Lviv, though the Armenian Church is believed to be older. Around 1564 Prince Alexandru Lăpușneanu moved the Moldavian capital here from Suceava, and Iași remained the capital until 1859. Vasile Lupu built Trei Ierarhi in 1635–1639 and set up a school and printing press there; the first book printed in Moldavia appeared in the city in 1643.

The town was repeatedly burned and looted by Tatars, Ottomans, Cossacks and Poles, and swept by plague, famine and fire. In the 18th century Greek became the language of teaching at its school, and in 1821 Alexander Ypsilantis proclaimed the Greek revolution at Trei Ierarhi. When Moldavia and Wallachia united in 1859, Iași shared the role of capital until 1862, then lost it to Bucharest. During the First World War, with Bucharest occupied, it was again the capital of a much-reduced Romania from 1916 to 1918.

By the mid-19th century at least a third of the city was Jewish. In the pogrom of late June and early July 1941, launched by the Antonescu regime, more than 13,000 Jews were killed, many of them dying on death trains. Soviet bombing in August 1944 destroyed two-thirds of the city. Communist industrialisation from 1955 brought factories and huge new districts; after 1989 most heavy industry collapsed, and the city rebuilt itself on universities, hospitals and software.

Iași calls itself Romania's cultural capital, and the claim rests on a long list of firsts: the first newspaper in Romanian in 1829, the first national theatre in 1840, the first university in 1860, the first memorial museum in 1918. The Junimea literary society met at Pogor House, and its review Convorbiri Literare first published Ion Creangă's Childhood Memories and Mihai Eminescu's best poems. Eminescu's linden tree in Copou Park and the Lonely Poplars of Bucium, which inspired one of his poems, are treated as literary monuments. The city also holds a large place in Jewish history: Naftali Herz Imber wrote the words of HaTikvah here, and Avraham Goldfaden staged what is often called the first professional Yiddish theatre performance in 1876.

Orthodoxy is central to public life. Iași is the seat of the Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bukovina, the city and its surroundings hold more than ten monasteries and about a hundred historic churches, and around 14 October hundreds of thousands of pilgrims come to venerate the relics of St Parascheva, brought here in 1641. There is also a Roman Catholic bishopric and a community of almost 10,000 Catholics.

With more than 60,000 students in five public universities, the city is young in term time. The Moldova Philharmonic, the opera and Luceafărul Theatre keep a full programme, the FILIT festival of literature and translation has run each year since 2013, and live music, readings and poetry nights fill the bars and cafés.

Iași had about 272,000 people in the city proper at the 2021 census, making it Romania's third-largest city, and about 423,000 in its metropolitan area, which official figures put at more than 613,000 by 2025. Tens of thousands of students and daily commuters add to the numbers. The city spreads from the old centre over hills and the Bahlui floodplain, and much of the population lives in districts built under communism, when migrants arrived from the villages.

Information technology is the growth industry, with offices of large multinationals and Romanian firms, alongside car parts, pharmaceuticals and metalworking. Education and health are major employers: Iași has fourteen public hospitals, including St Spiridon, one of the oldest in the country, and a large regional emergency hospital is being built. Shopping has moved partly to malls such as Iulius, but the open-air markets still sell produce from nearby villages and from across the border in Moldova.

In 2015 Iași was rated as having the second-worst air quality in Romania, after Bucharest. The city's long-standing complaint is its isolation: the A8 motorway, planned to link it to the rest of the country, is still in various stages of construction.

Iași eats the food of Moldavia, which is hearty and pork-based. Tochitură moldovenească, the Moldavian version of tochitură, is pork cut into small cubes and cooked slowly in its own fat and juices, often with smoked sausage and sometimes in tomato sauce, and is served with mămăligă, the maize porridge that accompanies many meals. Ciorbă, the sour soup soured with borș from fermented bran, vinegar or sauerkraut juice, comes in many versions, including ciorbă moldovenească de găină, a sour soup of boiling hen. Sarmale, cabbage or vine leaves rolled around minced meat and rice, are made for Christmas and Easter.

Sweet pastries are a Moldavian speciality. Poale-n brâu, also called brânzoaice, are soft cakes filled with sweetened cheese; mucenici, figure-of-eight pastries glazed with honey and sprinkled with walnuts, are eaten on 9 March; and pelincile Domnului is a Moldavian pie of thin honeyed wheat cakes layered with hemp-seed cream. Cozonac, a sweet bread with nuts, poppy seeds or Turkish delight, is a fixture of Easter and Christmas tables.

The city sits in wine country, with vineyards at Copou, Bucium and other villages on its edges. Cotnari, north-west of the city, is known for Grasă de Cotnari, a sweet white, and Bohotin is another county vineyard. Țuică, plum brandy, is the everyday spirit. The daily markets at Nicolina, Alexandru and Păcurari, and the sunken market in front of Hala Centrală, are the places to see what Moldavian kitchens are made from.