Constanța

Constanța's peninsula is compact enough to walk in a morning and rewards it. The centrepiece is the Roman mosaic complex — the floor of a large commercial building that connected the ancient upper town to its harbour, uncovered in the mid twentieth century and left where it lies beneath a protective structure, with geometric panels running across an area that takes a moment to comprehend from the viewing walkway. Below and around it, the storage rooms and the line of the ancient quay are still readable. The National History and Archaeology Museum next door holds the movable finds, and among them a small group of marble sculptures found together in the 1960s that are the best Roman pieces in the country, including a coiled serpent figure that has become the museum's emblem. The rest of the peninsula is a walk rather than a list: an ornate early-twentieth-century mosque whose minaret can be climbed for the view, an Orthodox cathedral, the small Genoese lighthouse on the promenade, streets of decaying and half-restored belle époque facades, and at the seaward tip the casino — an art-nouveau pleasure palace on the rocks that stood ruined for decades and has now been brought back. Whether you can go inside depends on the stage of the works, which is worth checking on the day.