Facing the Black Sea, at Romania's eastern edge, stands the country's oldest city: Constanța, with more than 2,500 years of history behind it. It was founded by Greek settlers under the name Tomis, became a Graeco-Roman port and the place where the poet Ovid spent his melancholy exile, and over the centuries passed through Byzantine, Genoese, Ottoman and Romanian hands. All that past can still be felt today in its historic old town overlooking the sea, a charming, slightly faded corner where ancient ruins, churches, a mosque and Belle Époque buildings sit side by side.
Its symbol is the Casino, an art nouveau gem rising above the seafront promenade like a ship run aground in front of the waves: for years it lay in ruins, wrapped in a romantic, ghostly air, and after a major restoration it shines again as the most photographed building in the city. But Constanța holds much more: one of the largest surviving Roman mosaics in the world, an archaeology museum packed with Graeco-Roman treasures, Romania's largest mosque and, just a step away, the long beach of Mamaia, the country's main Black Sea resort.
This guide shows you what to see and do in Constanța: the Casino and the seafront promenade, the Roman building with its giant mosaic, the Carol I Mosque, the National History and Archaeology Museum with its ancient statues, the old town by the port and the beaches of Mamaia. Plus how to get around, where to stay and what to eat in this port city where Romania looks out to sea and ancient history lives alongside the bustle of the coast.
Constanța is Romania's oldest city. It was founded around the 6th century BC by Greek settlers from Miletus under the name Tomis, as a trading colony on the Black Sea coast. In 8 AD, Emperor Augustus exiled the Roman poet Ovid here; he died in Tomis longing for Rome and left writings about the harshness and cold of that far edge of the empire. Under Rome the city prospered as a port: the large building with the mosaic that still survives dates from that period. Later it was renamed Constantiana in honour of a sister of Emperor Constantine, which is where its current name comes from. It passed through Byzantine hands, was frequented by the Genoese in the Middle Ages and spent centuries under Ottoman rule, which left its mark in the mosques. In 1878, after Romania's independence, Dobrogea and Constanța became part of the country, and the city modernised as a major port and seaside resort, with the Casino as the emblem of that Belle Époque. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Romanian east, where the great river meets the sea: the Danube Delta, a wetland protected by Unesco, and Constanța, the old Greek colony of Tomis where the poet Ovid was exiled.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
When you look out over the Black Sea from Constanța's seafront promenade, with the Casino on one side and the port on the other, you are standing on the ground of Romania's oldest city: a place that has been continuously inhabited for more than two and a half thousand years. Its story begins around the 6th century BC, when Greek sailors and settlers from Miletus, in Asia Minor, founded a trading colony on this coast and called it Tomis. It was part of the great Greek expansion along the shores of the Black Sea (the Pontus Euxinus), a sea the Hellenes dotted with colony-cities devoted to trading wheat, fish, salt and slaves with the peoples of the interior.
Tomis prospered as a port and a meeting point between the Greek world and the Getae and other Thracian and Scythian peoples who lived in the region. Legend even linked these shores to the myth of Jason and the Argonauts and to Medea. For centuries the city lived from the sea and from trade, in a frontier land between Mediterranean civilisation and the steppes to the north. That status as a far edge, the last outpost of the known world before the 'barbarian' lands, would shape its history and its reputation, and it would be immortalised by the most illustrious of its unwilling residents: an exiled Roman poet.
In 8 AD, the emperor Augustus made a decision that would forever tie the name of Tomis to world literature: he exiled the poet Publius Ovidius Naso to the city. Ovid was one of Rome's greatest writers, the author of the 'Metamorphoses' and the 'Art of Love'. The exact reasons for his banishment have never been known for certain (Ovid spoke of 'a poem and a mistake'), but the result was that the most refined poet in the imperial capital ended his days on that cold, remote edge of the Pontus, far from the Rome he loved. From Tomis he wrote the 'Tristia' and the 'Letters from the Black Sea', melancholy verses in which he complained about the cold, the snow, the strange language of the locals and the sheer distance. He died there around 17 or 18 AD. Today a statue of Ovid stands over the main square of the old town, which bears his name.
Under Roman rule, Tomis enjoyed its golden age. It became part of the province of Moesia and later of Scythia Minor, and grew into a thriving port and one of the leading cities on the western Black Sea coast. One of Constanța's great treasures comes from that Roman period: the huge 4th-century AD commercial building with its mosaic floor of almost 2,000 square metres, which linked the upper town with the port and from which merchants kept watch over maritime traffic. The city was later renamed Constantiana, in honour (according to tradition) of a sister of the emperor Constantine the Great, and that is where its current name, Constanța, comes from. It was also an early centre of Christianity in the region.
With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Tomis-Constantiana passed to the Byzantine Empire, which controlled this coastal strip for centuries, though it remained exposed to the waves of peoples crossing the lower Danube: Goths, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars. The city went through periods of decline and recovery, always shaped by its position on the frontier. In the late Middle Ages, merchants from the Republic of Genoa, who dominated Black Sea trade, frequented this port and left their mark; even today a small lighthouse in the old town is known as the 'Genoese lighthouse', a reminder of that Italian presence on the coast.
From the 15th century onwards, the advance of the Ottoman Empire changed the region's destiny. Dobruja (the area between the Danube and the Black Sea where Constanța lies) remained under Turkish rule for more than four centuries. Under the Ottomans the city, then known as Köstence, was a modest port, but the region filled with diverse communities: Turks and Tatars (who still have a presence in the area today), as well as Romanians, Greeks, Armenians and others. That Ottoman and Muslim heritage left behind mosques and a multicultural imprint that makes Dobruja one of the most mixed regions in Romania. Today's Constanța keeps that character as a crossroads of cultures and religions, visible in its Orthodox and Armenian churches, its synagogue and its great mosque.
Constanța's great revival came in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th. In 1878, after the Russo-Turkish War and the Congress of Berlin, Dobruja and its coastal capital became part of the young Kingdom of Romania, which had just won its independence. For the new state, Constanța was a strategic gem: its only major outlet to the sea. The Romanian government invested in modernising and expanding the port, which became the country's main one, and in connecting the city to the rest of Romania by rail and by an impressive bridge over the Danube at Cernavodă, designed by the engineer Anghel Saligny.
Besides being a port, Constanța turned into an elegant, fashionable seaside resort, where Romanian and European high society came to bathe in the sea. The symbol of that Belle Époque was the Casino, opened in 1910 to plans by the architect Daniel Renard: a spectacular Art Nouveau building facing the sea, with shell-shaped windows, which became the hub of the city's glamorous social life and its emblem. Nearby Mamaia also began its career as a resort around then. Constanța was living a second golden age, this time as the maritime gateway to modern Romania and an aristocratic summer destination.
The 20th century brought Constanța both highs and lows. Both world wars affected it because of its strategic value as a port; during the Second World War, the city and its oil and port facilities were bombed. Then came the long communist period, during which the regime massively developed the port, turning it into one of the largest on the Black Sea and in south-eastern Europe, and transformed the coast into a major holiday destination for workers from the Eastern Bloc, building hotels and complexes on a huge scale in Mamaia and in the resorts to the south (Eforie, Neptun, Mangalia). The Casino, on the other hand, gradually lost its role and slipped into a long decline.
After the fall of communism in 1989, Constanța remained Romania's great port and the capital of its coast, though with ups and downs. Many buildings in the old town, including the iconic Casino, fell into neglect, giving the Peninsula that romantic, faded air that so fascinates visitors. In recent years, however, the city has set about recovering its heritage: the Casino has been restored and shines again, and other historic buildings are gradually being renovated. Today Constanța combines its role as a major industrial and logistics port with that of a tourist destination offering more than two and a half thousand years of history (from Greek and Roman Tomis to the modern city), museums full of ancient treasures, a charming old town by the sea and, just a short hop away, the beaches of Mamaia. A place where Romania looks out over the Black Sea, and where the echo of Ovid's exile still sounds among the waves.
