Mănăstirea Coșuna

The oldest surviving church in the Craiova area, a sixteenth-century foundation on the city's edge — and almost nobody goes.

That combination is the recommendation. It is five minutes off a main road in the 1 Mai district, it is usually empty, and it sees none of the coach traffic that reaches Hurezi 113 km away or Tismana at 131.

It also fills a gap in what the city can show you. Central Craiova is almost entirely a creation of the decades around 1900, built on grain money; the one older building in the centre is Casa Băniei. Everything between the Bănia and the 1880s is out in the region — which means a four-century hole in the visible history, and this is the nearest thing to filling it without driving two hours. Churches and monasteries in Oltenia is the wider roundup.

If you have an hour and a car, go. Dress modestly, as at any working Romanian monastery, and expect the liturgical schedule to come first.