Soroca is one of those towns that seem made up by a storyteller: on the bank of the Dniester, looking across to Ukraine, it holds an almost perfect circular medieval fortress —a rarity in Europe— and, at the same time, a hill crowned by lavish mansions of the Roma community that earned it the nickname of Moldova's 'Roma capital'. Between these two extremes, a giant stone candle rises above the river in tribute to those who preserved the country's language and culture. All this in a quiet northern town, far from the mass tourist routes, where curious travellers find an authentic and surprising Moldova.
Soroca Fortress is the main draw: a stone ring with five bastions, built by Stephen the Great in 1499 and rebuilt in stone by his son Petru Rareș between 1543 and 1546, with a circular design so geometric that it is linked to the fortresses of the Italian Renaissance. Restored a few years ago with European support, today you can walk its walls, towers and inner courtyard for very little money. A few minutes away, the Candle of Gratitude (Lumânarea Recunoștinței) invites you to climb its hundreds of steps for the best view of the Dniester.
This guide covers Soroca with a practical, honest eye: how to get there from Chișinău by rutiera or car, how much it really costs to enter the fortress (next to nothing), what to expect from the famous Gypsy Hill —and how to visit it respectfully—, and how to link the three highlights in a single day. A different, cheap getaway full of history, ideal for anyone who wants to get to know deep Moldova and not just the wineries near the capital.
Soroca grew up around a ford on the Dniester, a crossing and defensive point since Antiquity, where some place the old Genoese fortress of Olchionia. In 1499, Stephen the Great of Moldavia had a wooden fortress built here to hold back the Tatar raids that crossed the river; between 1543 and 1546, his son Petru Rareș rebuilt it in stone with a perfectly circular plan and five bastions, the work of masters influenced by the Italian Renaissance. For centuries the fortress defended the principality's eastern border. With the annexation of Bessarabia by the Russian Empire in 1812, Soroca ended up on the Russian side; in the 20th century it passed through Romania (between the wars), the USSR and, since 1991, independent Moldova. In 2004 the Candle of Gratitude was inaugurated on a nearby hill, promoted by the writer Ion Druță as a tribute to those who preserved Moldovan culture. The Roma community, settled here for centuries, began building the mansions of Gypsy Hill in the nineties. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The north brings together the country's most spectacular landscapes: monasteries carved into the rock above the Dniester, medieval fortresses and sacred valleys full of legends.
Read the history of The north (Soroca, Orheiul Vechi) →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. There are not many in Chisinau, but the ones there are worth it. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Tap the cards below and have a look.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Soroca exists for one very specific reason: the river. Here, in the north of present-day Moldova, the Dniester (Nistru to Moldovans) could be crossed at a shallow ford. It was one of the few natural crossings on a wide, powerful river that rises in the Ukrainian Carpathians and flows down to the Black Sea. Whoever controlled that ford controlled trade, migration and, above all, invasions. That is why the site was settled and fought over from very early on.
Tradition holds that a fortified settlement linked to the Genoese stood on this spot. In the late Middle Ages the Genoese ran trading posts on the Black Sea and along the rivers that flowed into it, and this supposed stronghold is sometimes called Olchionia or Alchiona. Legend aside, what is certain is that the area was part of the lands that became the Principality of Moldavia in the 14th century. That state stretched between the Carpathians and the Dniester and had to defend its eastern flank constantly.
The enemy came from the east and the south: the Tatar hordes of the Crimean Khanate and, behind them, the rising Ottoman Empire. They crossed the Dniester at the fords, raided villages and carried off captives. Fortifying the river crossings became a matter of survival for Moldavia, and Soroca, thanks to its ford, was one of the key points along that natural line of defence. So the town was born as a frontier stronghold, a role that in one way or another it has never given up.
The great name in Soroca's history is Stephen the Great (Ștefan cel Mare). He was voivode of Moldavia from 1457 to 1504 and is one of the most revered figures in the national memory. For decades Stephen held off Ottoman, Tatar, Hungarian and Polish pressure, and to do it he built or strengthened a network of fortresses across the principality. In 1499 he had a timber-and-earth fortress built at Soroca, above the Dniester ford, to stop the raids that crossed the river. That first stronghold did its job, but it was vulnerable.
The decisive change came with his son, Petru Rareș, who ruled twice (1527-1538 and 1541-1546). Between 1543 and 1546, Petru Rareș rebuilt the fortress in stone and gave it the shape that makes it unique today: a perfectly circular ring about 37.5 metres across, with five bastions spaced at equal intervals. Four are round and one is square, and the square one also serves as the gate tower. This geometry is unusual in Eastern European military architecture and much more typical of Italian Renaissance designs.
In fact, specialists point out how closely Soroca resembles the circular Italian fortresses of the 16th century, and some have compared it to castles in northern Italy. The architect's name is not documented with any certainty, but the design shows that Moldavia was in touch with the building trends of the time in Europe. The result was a compact, elegant and practical fortress, built for artillery and to withstand sieges. It guarded the Dniester crossing for centuries, and today it is one of the best-preserved fortresses in the country.
Soroca's modern history is the story of a land that changed hands again and again. The Principality of Moldavia ended up as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, paying tribute in exchange for keeping some autonomy. But the region was caught between clashing powers. In 1812, after another Russo-Turkish war, the Russian Empire annexed the eastern half of Moldavia, between the Prut and the Dniester. That territory came to be called Bessarabia. Soroca ended up on the Russian side and became a district capital in a remote province of the Tsarist empire.
Under Russian rule in the 19th century, Soroca grew into a small market town with a very mixed population: Moldovans (Romanians), Russians, Ukrainians, Jews and Roma. The Jewish community grew large and active. This multi-ethnic character, typical of Bessarabia, shaped the town's life, and you can still sense it today in the way Romanian and Russian are both spoken in its streets.
The 20th century brought brutal upheavals. After the First World War and the fall of the Russian Empire, Bessarabia united with Romania in 1918, and for two decades Soroca was a Romanian town. In 1940, under the pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the USSR occupied Bessarabia and created the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Second World War moved the border several more times, with a Romanian-German occupation and then the Soviet reconquest. It also brought the tragedy of the Holocaust, which destroyed much of the region's Jewish community. From 1944 to 1991, Soroca was a Soviet town, with its industry, its kolkhozes and its Russification. In 1991, when the USSR broke up, it became part of independent Moldova.
In independent Moldova, Soroca added a new but deeply symbolic monument to its medieval fortress: the Candle of Gratitude (Lumânarea Recunoștinței). It is a tower-chapel about 29.5 metres tall, shaped like a lit candle, standing on top of a rocky hill above the Dniester on the outskirts of town. The project was driven by Ion Druță (1928-2023), the most important Moldovan writer of the 20th century and a central figure in the country's cultural identity.
The monument was inaugurated on 27 March 2004, a symbolic date: the anniversary of Bessarabia's union with Romania in 1918. Its purpose is openly commemorative. It honours the unnamed heroes who, over the centuries and despite occupations and Russification, kept Moldova's language, culture and history alive. The stone 'flame' is meant to be a light that burns for that memory, and it is said that at night its lighting can be seen along the river, from Otaci in the north to Camenca in the south.
To reach the candle you climb a long stone staircase up the hillside. It's a small effort that many Moldovans make almost as a civic pilgrimage. When Ion Druță died in 2023, his ashes were buried beside the monument he had dreamed of, joining the writer and his symbol for good. The Candle turned a hill in Soroca into one of the country's best-loved places of national memory, and it perfectly complements the fortress that tells the town's military history.
The other big distinctive feature of today's Soroca is the so-called Gypsy Hill (Dealul Țiganilor), in the Bujoreni neighbourhood. The Roma community has lived in Soroca for centuries, and many people see the town as a kind of symbolic 'capital' of Moldova's Roma. But it was from the 1990s, after the fall of the USSR, that the neighbourhood took on its current look. Well-off families, often with money earned working abroad, built mansions in an exuberant, over-the-top style.
These houses imitate famous buildings from around the world in their own way. People mention façades inspired by Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, the Capitol in Washington or churches with golden domes. The result is a surreal skyline of towers, columns, balustrades and roofs that looks like nothing else in Europe. Many of these mansions are unfinished inside or are only lived in on special occasions. They work mostly as symbols of prestige and status within the community rather than as everyday homes.
That contrast makes Soroca a one-of-a-kind town that no single image can sum up: a medieval fortress down by the river, a candle of national memory on one hill and a neighbourhood of Roma palaces on another. Today it is a quiet place in northern Moldova, far from mass tourism. It lives off farming, cross-border trade and a budding tourism drawn by its fortress, which was restored with European funds. For the curious traveller, Soroca is a lesson in the real Moldova: a borderland, mixed, battered by history and still proud of its memory.
