Craiova

Craiova's principal draw is the Art Museum, housed in the Jean Mihail Palace, an ornate turn-of-the-century building whose ground floor holds six early works by Constantin Brâncuși, including a version of The Kiss and Mademoiselle Pogany, an unexpectedly serious collection for a provincial city. Around it, the centre has been repaved and the main street pedestrianised, with the Administrative Palace, the Mihai Viteazul statue and a cluster of nineteenth-century public buildings. The city's other set piece is Nicolae Romanescu Park, laid out at the start of the twentieth century to a design by the French landscape architect Édouard Redont, which won a prize at the Paris exhibition of 1900: nearly a hundred hectares of lakes, a suspension bridge, a grotto and old trees, and one of the largest and best public parks in the country. Craiova is otherwise a working city, unpolished and rarely visited by foreign travellers.

What you actually see

• Brâncuși at the Art Museum - six early sculptures in the Jean Mihail Palace.
• Nicolae Romanescu Park - a large landscaped park with lakes and a suspension bridge.
• The pedestrian centre - restored streets and squares around the Administrative Palace.
• The Oltenia Museum - regional history and ethnography collections.

When to go

April to October; the park is the reason to come and it needs leaves on the trees. Summer in the Oltenian plain is very hot. Museums close on Mondays. Spring and early autumn are the comfortable windows.

Honest expectations

Outside the restored core the city is drab, and the distances between the museum, the park and the centre are walkable but dull. The Brâncuși room is small and can be busy with school groups. English labelling is limited.

Nearby

Târgu Jiu with the Brâncuși ensemble is north; the Danube and Calafat lie south.