Oltenia's Museum of History and Archaeology

The right place to go if the question you arrived in Craiova with is "what was here before all this".

Because the answer is not visible on the street. Central Craiova is almost entirely a creation of the decades around 1900, built on grain money, and the only older building in the centre is Casa Băniei. The city's visible history has a four-century hole in it.

This is where the missing centuries are kept: Roman material from Pelendava, the settlement that stood where Craiova now does and whose name survives as a city street; medieval Wallachian material; and the documentary record of the Bănia — the office that governed Oltenia from this city and ranked first among the boyars of Wallachia after the ruling prince. The Bănia and the money sets that out, and a short history of Craiova puts it in sequence.

Its natural sciences wing is a separate building and is the museum that works with children. Telephone before a special trip: no museum in this city publishes a dependable timetable, and most Romanian museums close on Monday. The museum-quarter guide has the morning route.