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.

History

Craiova stands on the site of the Dacian and Roman city of Pelendava, and its bans, the highest-ranking boyars of Wallachia, first of the Craiovești family, had the right to mint coins with their own image, the origin of the Romanian word ban for coins. No source names the city before 1475; Prince Emanuel Giani Ruset moved the seat of Wallachia here in 1770-1771, and around 1860 the city had 4,633 buildings, among them 26 churches and 11 schools (Wikipedia, Craiova).

What's there

• 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.

Before you go

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.

Key facts