--- title: "Moldova travel guide: wine cellars, cliff monasteries and Gagauzia | Wimup" description: "Moldova on Wimup: how to plan the trip from Chișinău, which cellars to book, where the cliff monasteries are, what to eat, when to go, and why the left bank is not on the itinerary." url: https://wimup.com/country/moldova type: Country guide updated: 2026-10-05 publisher: Wimup (https://wimup.com) --- # Moldova, the country that keeps its best rooms underground Wine cellars measured in kilometres, a monastery cut into a limestone cliff above the Răut, and roughly four hectares of vineyard for every hundred people. Moldova is small, an hour from the Romanian border, and almost entirely unbooked. ## Quick answer Base in **Chișinău** and drive. **Cricova** to the north and **Mileștii Mici** to the south are underground cellar complexes, each half an hour out, booked ahead and toured by vehicle. Day two is **Orheiul Vechi**, the cave monastery in the Răut gorge. Day three is the Dniester: **Saharna** and **Țipova** in **Rezina**, and the fortress at **Soroca**. Two more days reach **Comrat** or **Purcari**. Come in **May** or **September**. Foreign ministries advise against travel to Transnistria. ## Quick facts - **Best months:** May · Sep · Oct - **Ideal length:** 4–6 days - **Budget per day:** $50–90 - **Language:** Romanian - **Getting around:** Rental car & marshrutkas - **2,409,200** People - **114,000** Hectares of vine - **200 km** Cellar galleries Moldova is planned from Chișinău, and almost everything worth the trip is inside a two-hour drive of it. The capital is low-rise, green and Soviet-planned, with the Nativity Cathedral and its free-standing bell tower in the middle of Cathedral Park, the Stephen the Great park beside it, and two national museums (History, and Ethnography and Natural History) that between them explain why a Romanian-speaking country spent most of the twentieth century inside the Soviet Union. Give it a day and treat it as a base rather than a destination. The reason to come is underground and starts fifteen kilometres north, at Cricova, whose galleries were cut for limestone and now run to about 120 kilometres of tunnel with streets named after the wines stored along them. A similar distance the other way, at Mileștii Mici, the same geology holds the largest wine collection in the world by bottle count. Both are entered by vehicle, which is not a gimmick: the tunnels are roads. Book ahead, because neither is a walk-in. North of the capital the Răut cuts a gorge at Orheiul Vechi, where a cave monastery is dug into the cliff above the villages of Butuceni and Trebujeni and monks still keep it. It is the most photographed place in the country and the one that most rewards an early start. Further up the Dniester, the cliff monasteries at Saharna and Țipova sit above the river in the Rezina district, and Soroca holds a round fortress built by Stephen the Great in 1499 and rebuilt in stone with five bastions, along with the hill of extravagant Roma mansions above the town. West, Ungheni is the rail and road crossing to Iași in Romania. South, the country changes language: Gagauzia is an autonomous region whose people speak a Turkic language and are Orthodox Christian, with its capital at Comrat, and beyond it Cahul sits near the Romanian border and the Danube. Southeast, Purcari has been making wine on the Dniester terraces since 1827 and is the country's best-known estate abroad. What is not on the itinerary is the left bank. Transnistria is outside the control of the Moldovan government and Western foreign ministries advise against travel to it, so it is named here rather than routed. Getting around is the one thing to plan for. Trains are few and slow, marshrutka minibuses reach every town but leave when they fill rather than on a timetable, and the cellars, monasteries and fortresses sit in places no scheduled service goes. A rental car or a hired driver is what turns a list of sights into a trip, and four to five days covers the centre and the north comfortably. ## Know before you go - **Population:** 2,409,200 - **Area:** 33,846 km² - **Density:** 81.2 / km² - **Capital:** Chișinău - **Major cities:** Chișinău, Bălți, Ungheni, Cahul, Orhei, Soroca, Comrat - **Tourism board:** Official site - **Currency:** Moldovan leu (MDL) Cards work in Chișinău, big hotels and visitor wineries. Guesthouses, marshrutkas and markets want cash. Draw leu in the capital and keep small notes. Change leftover leu before you fly. - **Language:** Romanian, with Russian widely spoken Romanian is official and on every sign and menu, in the Latin alphabet. Most people over thirty speak Russian, the working language in the north and Gagauzia. English thins out beyond Chișinău. - **Visa:** Visa-free for many nationalities Citizens of more than a hundred countries, including the EU, UK, US and Canada, enter visa-free for 90 days in any 180. Others apply in advance. Rules change, so check before booking. - **Travel advice:** Read it for the left bank The right bank, where this whole guide sits, is normal travel. The FCDO advises against all travel to Transnistria, which is outside government control and has very limited consular help. - **Getting around:** Rental car, marshrutka or a hired driver Rent a car: the cellars, monasteries and fortresses have no scheduled service. Marshrutkas reach every town but leave when full. Trains are few. For a cellar tasting, hire a driver. - **Airport:** Chișinău International, 13 km out Chișinău International, 13 kilometres out, is the only international airport, with a city bus and taxis. Overland, take the train from Iași through Ungheni or a bus from Bucharest. - **Booking the cellars:** Ahead, always Neither Cricova nor Mileștii Mici takes walk-ins. Tours run by vehicle through the galleries and end in a tasting, so book direct and arrange a driver. The cellar temperature holds all year. - **Tipping:** Round up, roughly ten per cent Not obligatory, but increasingly expected in Chișinău: around ten per cent if service is not on the bill. Round up taxis. Tip full-day guides and drivers in leu cash. - **Power:** 230V, 50Hz, plugs C and F European two-pin round plugs. UK, Irish and North American travellers need an adapter, and North American devices must handle 230V, as most chargers do. - **Calling code:** +373 Prepaid SIMs are cheap at the airport and city phone shops, with good coverage on the right bank. EU roaming does not apply, so check your own plan's charges. - **Emergency:** 112 One number for police, fire and ambulance, in line with the European standard, with an operator who routes the call. It works from a mobile with or without credit. - **Time zone:** EET, UTC+2 (UTC+3 in summer) The same clock as Romania, Bulgaria and Greece, an hour ahead of central Europe. Daylight saving runs from late March to late October. ## When to visit - **Jan**: The coldest stretch, often below freezing, with short days and snow in the countryside. The cellars are unaffected and the villages are quiet in a way that suits some visitors and not others - **Feb**: Still cold and grey, and the cheapest month to be here. Rural roads and the tracks down to the Dniester monasteries can be difficult after snow - **Mar**: The thaw, which means mud on the unpaved approaches. Mărțișor, the red-and-white spring token worn from the first of the month, is pinned to coats everywhere - **Apr** (good): Blossom in the orchards and vineyards, cool days and long light returning. Orthodox Easter usually falls now and fills churches and family tables - **May** (best): The best month for driving the country: green, warm without the summer heat, and everything open. The Răut gorge and the Dniester cliffs are at their best - **Jun** (good): Warm and long-evening, before the July heat arrives. Good for the monasteries and for the terraces in Chișinău, which move outdoors for the season - **Jul**: Hot, with Chișinău regularly in the high twenties and touching the low thirties, and afternoon thunderstorms. Underground is a genuine relief - **Aug**: The hottest month, and the one when the earliest grapes come in. Bearable if you plan around the middle of the day - **Sep** (best): Harvest, and the best month to be in wine country. Warm days, cool nights, presses running, and roadside must for sale before it ferments - **Oct** (peak): National Wine Day fills the Great National Assembly Square in Chișinău on the first weekend, with more than a hundred producers pouring and wineries running their own programmes. Book beds well ahead - **Nov**: Grey, cold and quiet, with the vines bare and the tourist season finished. Prices drop and so does the reason to drive far - **Dec**: Winter proper, with Christmas marked on both the 25th and, in many households, the 7th of January. Chișinău puts on a market; the countryside goes indoors ## Fun fact Mileștii Mici holds the Guinness World Record for the largest wine cellar by bottles, registered in 2005 at more than 1.5 million. They lie in 55 kilometres of galleries within a limestone network of roughly 200 kilometres, all of it cut by quarrying. Cricova adds about 120 kilometres. ## Stereotypes, sorted out - **Myth:** It is the poorest country in Europe and there is nothing to see. **Reality:** The first half is a statistic about GDP per head. The second does not follow. Moldova lacks a tourist industry. It has a cave monastery in a river gorge, two underground cities of wine, a fifteenth-century fortress on the Dniester and a Turkic-speaking south. Expect few English menus and no queues. - **Myth:** It is a war zone, or about to be one. **Reality:** Ukraine's war is next door and shows here in electricity prices, refugee numbers and politics. It is not fought on Moldovan soil. Western foreign ministries treat the right bank as ordinary travel and reserve their warnings for Transnistria. Read the advisory and plan around what it names. - **Myth:** Moldova is just a smaller Romania. **Reality:** The language is the same and much of the food too. The twentieth century differs. Moldova spent it inside the Soviet Union, so most people over thirty speak Russian, the capital runs on Soviet blocks and boulevards, and there is a Turkic-speaking south and a breakaway left bank. - **Myth:** The wine is cheap stuff for the Russian market. **Reality:** It was, for decades, until Russia closed its market to it twice. The industry rebuilt around export, and around ninety per cent now leaves the country, most of it for the EU. Four wine regions carry protected geographic indication, and serious producers bet on Fetească Neagră and Rară Neagră. - Wine is hospitality, not a purchase. A guesthouse pouring its own is offering you something the family made, and refusing outright reads as a slight. Accept a small glass, say it is good if it is, and say you are driving if you are. - Take something when you are invited into a home. Sweets, coffee, flowers in an odd number. Even numbers of flowers are for funerals across this region, and it is the sort of mistake that is noticed and never mentioned. - Churches expect covered shoulders and knees, and women often cover their heads at monasteries. Scarves are usually available at the door. Ask before photographing inside, and never photograph during a service. - Toasts are given properly and looked at properly. Meet people's eyes when you clink, and expect the host to speak first and at some length. It is not a formality anyone is trying to shorten. - Politics is not small talk. Moldova is split over its relationship with the European Union and with Russia, and that split runs through families. Ask about it if someone raises it, and let them lead. - Learn where the left bank sits in the conversation. For many Moldovans Transnistria is not an adventure destination but an unresolved thirty-year problem, and hearing a visitor describe it as a curiosity lands badly. ## Famous Moldovan faces - **Maria Bieșu**: Soprano who took Moldovan opera abroad, above all as Cio-Cio-San, from her 1961 debut - **Eugen Doga**: Composer of film scores and waltzes, the country's most exported music. Died in 2025 - **Emil Loteanu**: Film director of Lăutarii and Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven - **Ion Druță**: Novelist whose The Burden of Our Goodness first put the postwar famine on the page - **Grigore Vieru**: Poet of Romanian language and identity, and the writer most quoted from memory here - **Zdob și Zdub**: Folk-punk band from Chișinău, sixth at Eurovision in 2005 on brass and fiddle - **Dan Bălan**: O-Zone's singer and the writer of Dragostea din tei, a pan-European hit of the 2000s - **Radu Albot**: Moldova's highest-ranked tennis player, world number 39 in August 2019 - **Serghei Tarnovschi**: Sprint canoeist, Olympic bronze in the C-1 1000 metres at Tokyo 2021 and Paris 2024 - **Nicolae Juravschi**: Canoeist with two golds at the 1988 Olympics and a third Olympic medal in 1996 - **Maia Sandu**: President since 2020, re-elected in November 2024 on European Union accession - **Nicolae Milescu**: Seventeenth-century scholar sent to Peking as Russia's ambassador in 1675 - **Zamfir Ralli-Arbore**: Chișinău-born revolutionary and geographer who first described Bessarabia in depth - **Vladimir Beșleagă**: Novelist of memory, the Dniester and the moral cost of the Soviet decades - **Anatol Dumitraș**: Singer whose ballads still play at weddings a decade after his death in 2016 - **Natalia Barbu**: Singer and violinist who sang Fight at Eurovision in 2007 and returned in 2024 ## Must-try Moldovan food - **Mămăligă**: Firm cornmeal cut with a thread, served with sheep cheese, sour cream and pork. - **Zeamă**: Soured chicken noodle soup with dill and a hot pepper. The dish Moldovans abroad miss. - **Sarmale**: Pork and rice rolled small in cabbage or vine leaves and cooked slowly. - **Tochitură**: Pork cooked down slowly in its own fat and spooned over mămăligă. Sunday food. - **Plăcinte**: Pan-fried or baked pastries of sheep cheese, potato, cabbage, pumpkin or sour cherry. - **Vertuta**: Plăcinte coiled into a spiral before baking, and the version for a festive table. - **Brânză de oi**: Brined sheep cheese, salty and crumbling, grated over mămăligă. Sold by the block. - **Colțunași**: Dumplings of cheese, potato, meat or sour cherry, boiled and served with sour cream. - **Murături**: Winter pickles: cucumbers, green tomatoes, watermelon, whole cabbages, from November. - **Cușma lui Guguță**: Sour-cherry crepes stacked into a cone under sweetened sour cream and chocolate. - **Must**: Fresh grape juice from the press, sold at the roadside in September before it ferments. - **Divin**: Moldovan brandy, distilled from local white wine and aged in oak in the French manner. - **Fetească Neagră**: The native black grape, with dark fruit and firm structure. Moldova's export bet. - **Rară Neagră**: The lighter, more perfumed native red, often blended. It rarely leaves the country. ## FAQs ### Do you need a visa for Moldova? Most likely not. Citizens of more than a hundred countries, including the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, may enter without a visa for up to 90 days in any 180-day period, and the passport is stamped on arrival. Everyone else applies in advance through the Moldovan authorities. Entry rules change, so confirm the current position with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or your own government's travel advice before your trip. ### Is Moldova safe, and what about Transnistria? The right bank, which is where everything in this guide sits, is ordinary European travel: petty theft in the capital, careless driving on rural roads, nothing that changes how you plan. Transnistria is a separate question. It is outside the control of the Moldovan government, Western foreign ministries including the FCDO advise against all travel there, and consular assistance is extremely limited. Wimup does not route anyone through it. Read your own government's advisory before you go, and again shortly before you fly. ### How many days does Moldova need? Four to six. One day for Chișinău and one of the two cellar complexes, a second for Orheiul Vechi, a third for the Dniester at Saharna, Țipova and Soroca. A fourth and fifth open the south, either Gagauzia and Comrat or the wine estates around Purcari in the southeast. Fewer than four days and you are choosing between the wine and the monasteries; more than a week and you are repeating yourself unless you are working through wineries seriously. ### Can you visit the wine cellars without a car? Not comfortably on your own. Cricova and Mileștii Mici are both toured by vehicle through the galleries and both end in a tasting, which rules out driving yourself back. The normal arrangement is a tour with transport from Chișinău, or a hired driver for the day. Book the winery directly and in advance, because neither takes walk-ins. ### What is Gagauzia? An autonomous region in the south of Moldova, with its capital at Comrat, whose autonomy was settled by law in 1994 and covers schooling, taxation and culture. The Gagauz are Orthodox Christian and speak a Turkic language, which UNESCO lists as vulnerable because Russian has taken over much of daily use. It is also one of the country's wine regions. Going there is a straightforward drive or marshrutka from the capital and needs no special arrangement. ## Related countries - [Italy](https://wimup.com/country/italy.md) - [France](https://wimup.com/country/france.md) - [All of Europe](https://wimup.com/europe) Part of [Europe](https://wimup.com/europe.md) ## Sources - [Tourism board](https://moldova.travel/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Travel advice](https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/moldova?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Booking the cellars](https://www.milestii-mici.md/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - Rankings are Wimup editorial picks. Prices, durations and budgets are editorial estimates, not live quotes; check the official site before you go.