Things to do
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Archbishops Palace
The seat of the Tomis archbishopric beside the cathedral, a 1920s building on the sea wall.
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Carol I Old Lighthouse
The 1860 light on the sea wall, disused, standing beside the Genoese one and marking how much the harbour moved in a century.
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Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul
The Orthodox cathedral of 1885 above the sea wall, burned in 1941 and rebuilt, in a Byzantine style with a carved iconostasis and a bell tower over the harbour.
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Constanta Aquarium
An aquarium of 1958 on the seafront below the casino, holding Black Sea and Danube species, which is a narrower and more interesting brief than it sounds.
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Constanta Art Museum
The city art collection, strong on the Romanian painters who worked on this coast, in a building on the boulevard above the old town.
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Constanța Casino
An art nouveau casino of 1910 on the sea wall, closed in 1990 and left to the weather for three decades, reopened after a restoration completed in 2024. It is the emblem of the coast and the interior is now visitable again.
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Constanța History and Archaeology Museum
The regional collection covering Greek Tomis, Roman Dobrogea and the medieval province, holding the Glykon serpent and a hoard of statuary found together in 1962. It is the best archaeological museum outside the capital.
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Dormition of the Theotokos Church
An 1885 Orthodox church in the streets behind the peninsula, small, and one of the few nineteenth century buildings the port has left.
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Faleza Nord
The cliff-top seafront between the old town and Mamaia, residential rather than historic, with the promenade that links the two and the city's ordinary beaches below it.
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Folk Art Museum
A collection of Dobrogean rural material culture, which is a genuinely different tradition from the Transylvanian and Moldavian ones the country's other museums show.
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Genoese Lighthouse
A lighthouse of 1860 on the peninsula's point, built by a Genoese company to mark the harbour and disused since 1913. It stands where the ancient port did.
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Grand Mosque of Constanta
The 1910 mosque built for the Muslim community of the Dobrogea, with a 50 metre minaret that can be climbed for the best view over the peninsula and the port. Its prayer carpet came from Ada Kaleh, the Danube island drowned by the Iron Gates dam.
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Great Synagogue Constanta
An 1911 Ashkenazi synagogue on the peninsula, roofless and fenced, left as it stands. It is the clearest surviving record of a community that was a fifth of the port.
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Greek Church Constanta
The Greek Orthodox church of 1867, built by the merchant community that ran the grain trade out of this port before the railway came.
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Histria
The oldest Greek settlement on the western Black Sea, founded about 657 before the common era, abandoned in the seventh century after the harbour silted. Its walls, basilicas and streets stand in a lagoon reserve forty kilometres north.
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Hunkar Mosque
The older mosque of the peninsula, built in 1868 for the Ottoman garrison and still in use, plainer and much quieter than the one with the minaret.
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Ion Jalea Sculpture Museum
The work of a sculptor who lost an arm at Marasesti in 1917 and carved for another sixty years, in a nineteenth century house on the peninsula.
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Lake Siutghiol
The freshwater lake behind Mamaia, separated from the sea by the spit and fed by springs in its own bed, with boats out to Ovidiu island.
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Mamaia
A sand spit eight kilometres long between the sea and Lake Siutghiol, developed from the 1900s as a royal bathing resort and now the country's main summer strip. It is loud from June to September and shut the rest of the year.
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Mamaia Casino
The 1930s casino on the spit, built when Mamaia was a royal resort rather than a strip, and one of the few old buildings left in it.
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Natural Sciences Museum Complex
The aquarium, planetarium, dolphinarium and micro-reserve north of the centre, run as one complex, and the reliable wet-afternoon answer here.
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Ovid Square
The square at the centre of the peninsula, named for the poet exiled here in the year 8 and holding his statue and the archaeology museum.
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Peninsula
The old town on its own headland, holding the casino, the archaeology museum, the Roman mosaic and the mosque, and small enough to walk end to end in twenty minutes. It empties out of season, which is when it is best.
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Plaja Mamaia
Eight kilometres of fine sand on the seaward side of the spit, the widest beach on the Romanian coast and the busiest.
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Plaja Modern
The city's own beach at the northern foot of the peninsula, walkable from the old town, and much the quieter of the two.
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Saint Anthony of Padua Church
The Roman Catholic church of 1937, built for the port's Italian stonemasons and their descendants.
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Lake
Techirghiol Lake
A salt lake south of the city whose black sapropelic mud has been used as a treatment since the 1890s, and which is saltier than the sea beside it.
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Tomis Tourist Port
The yacht harbour under the casino, built into the old fishing port, and the best place on the peninsula to look back at the sea wall.