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.

Two sites inland and north are the county's genuine archaeological depth and both are quiet. Histria, on the shore of a lagoon about seventy kilometres north of the city, was founded by Greek colonists from Miletus in the seventh century BC and is the oldest urban settlement on Romanian territory — walls, street lines, basilica foundations and temple platforms spread across a low promontory, with a small museum and, usually, almost nobody there. It requires imagination rather than offering spectacle, and the setting on the water is part of the reward. Adamclisi, inland to the south-west, is the opposite kind of site: a massive circular Roman victory monument, reconstructed in the twentieth century on the original foundations, standing alone in open farmland with its sculpted panels displayed in an adjacent museum. It commemorates a campaign, and it can be left at that. Both sites need a car and both make a good half-day out of the city, particularly combined with the vineyards of the Murfatlar area between them, which is one of Romania's established wine regions and a pleasant place to stop.

Romania's holiday coast runs down these forty-odd kilometres and it is worth knowing how it is segmented, because the differences are large. Mamaia, immediately north of the city, is a narrow sandbar between the sea and a lake, built up with hotels and clubs and the country's loudest, busiest and most expensive resort — genuinely good sand, and a scene rather than a retreat. South of the city, a chain of purpose-built resorts from the socialist era carries mythological names and caters to families and package holidays, each with its own character and price level, quieter and considerably cheaper. Eforie sits beside Lake Techirghiol, whose black sapropelic mud has been used therapeutically for over a century and which supports a substantial spa industry; bathing in the lake and then in the sea is the local ritual. And at the very bottom, a few kilometres from the Bulgarian border, Vama Veche is a small village that became the country's counter-cultural summer institution decades ago — camping on the sand, music until dawn, a deliberate scruffiness that is now partly performance but still unlike anywhere else on this coast. The season is short and intense: July and August are full, June and September are pleasant and much emptier, and out of season most of it closes.

The region between the Danube and the sea has been a meeting point for a very long time, and it shows in ways a visitor notices immediately: minarets in small towns, Turkish and Tatar communities who have been here for generations, and a kitchen quite unlike the rest of the country — more fish, more lamb, filo pastries, a use of spice the interior does not share. The food guide sets that out properly; standing here, the point is simply that Dobrogea tastes different and that this is the part of Romania where that is most obvious. On planning, the honest position is that this county sits a long way east of the rest of the country and works best as part of an eastern leg rather than as a detour from anywhere. Paired with the delta immediately north — which the Tulcea guide covers — it makes a coherent four or five days of water, birds, archaeology and beach that has nothing to do with Transylvania and is better for the contrast. Constanța is reachable by train from Bucharest in a few hours and by a good motorway, and it has an airport with summer connections, so it is one of the easier parts of Romania to reach directly.