🚌 Transport
Getting around Craiova
Most visitors need no transport at all: the centre is flat, pedestrianised through the middle and crossed in fifteen minutes. Where you do need it — Romanescu, the station, the airport, a matchday — here is how it works, and the honest truth about parking in December.
RAT Craiova fares
We do not print a fare here. RAT Craiova does not publish a tariff in a form we can date, and a wrong ticket price is worse than none — buy on board or at a kiosk, and check the operator for the current figure. RAT Craiova
Walking first, and mostly only
Craiova is one of the easiest Romanian cities to get around, for a reason that sounds dull and matters enormously: it is flat. There is no hill, no old town on a slope, no cobbled climb. The centre is a grid of nineteenth-century streets around one long boulevard.
From Piața Mihai Viteazul to the Art Museum is two minutes. To Casa Băniei and the Oltenia Museum, under ten. To the National Theatre, five. The pedestrianised stretch of Calea Unirii runs through the middle of all of it.
A first day here needs no ticket. That is not true of many cities this size, and it is the single most useful thing on this page.
Where you do need transport
Romanescu Park is the main exception — far enough south that walking there and back eats an hour you could spend in the park. A short ride each way is the sensible call, especially in summer.
The railway station, in Piața Constantin Brâncuși, is twenty-five minutes east on foot. Pleasant with hand luggage, not with a suitcase.
The airport, eight kilometres east on Calea București, is a taxi or a hire car.
Ion Oblemenco, about two kilometres west, is a twenty-five-minute walk — and on a matchday walking genuinely beats driving, because the roads around the ground are the slow part.
Buses and trams
RAT Craiova runs the public transport, and unusually for a Romanian city this size it includes trams as well as buses. The tram line runs east–west along the main axis, which makes it useful for exactly the trips a visitor might make: the station end, the Calea București corridor towards the airport side of town.
Paying. Buy on board or at a kiosk. Contactless payment has spread across Romanian city networks but coverage varies by vehicle — have some small change as a fallback.
We are not printing a fare on this page, for the reason given under the fares heading: there is no tariff we can cite and date, and a wrong price is worse than none.
Taxis and ride-hailing
Both work well and both are cheap by the standards of Bucharest or Cluj. Ride-hailing apps show the price before you accept, which removes the only real friction.
The one time to avoid them is the last few hundred metres into the centre on a December evening, when the streets are closed or crawling and you would be faster on foot.
Driving and parking
In the city, driving is easy and parking is the problem — paid, contested in the centre, and in market season partly removed altogether.
The rule that works: park once, on the ring, and walk in. The centre is fifteen minutes end to end, so there is no space near the square that saves you a meaningful walk — only spaces that save you forty minutes of circling. See getting to the Christmas market and where to park.
You will want a car for Oltenia. Târgu Jiu and Drobeta-Turnu Severin have rail connections; the monasteries at Horezu and Tismana, the cave at Baia de Fier, Segarcea and Rânca effectively do not. If your trip is the region rather than the city, hire one.
Cycling
Craiova is among the least hilly cities in Romania, which makes a bike genuinely practical rather than aspirational. The Jiu meadow west of the centre and the flat lanes south towards Segarcea are the easy rides.
In July and August
Plan the middle of the day indoors. A 30 °C daily high and a centre with almost no shade means that between about eleven and five, walking between sights is not the pleasant default it is in April — see the weather month by month and the parks.
