The short version
One day is enough to see what Craiova is for, and not enough to exhaust it. The centre is compact and flat, the three things worth travelling for are within twenty minutes of each other on foot, and nothing on this route needs a taxi.
- 09:30 — Piața Mihai Viteazul while the square is still quiet.
- 10:00 — The Art Museum, for the Brâncuși room.
- 11:30 — Casa Băniei and the Oltenia Museum.
- 13:00 — Lunch on or just off Calea Unirii.
- 14:30 — Romanescu Park, the other half of the city.
- 17:30 — The Old Town and the Calea Unirii walk.
- 19:30 — Dinner, then a terrace or a wine bar.
Checked October 2026. Museum hours and ticket prices in Craiova are not reliably published online and change with the season. Ring ahead if your day depends on one — particularly the Art Museum, because *The Kiss* has been lent out for temporary exhibitions before.
09:30 — The square
Start at Piața Mihai Viteazul, where the equestrian statue of Michael the Brave stands at one end and the Administrative Palace closes the view behind the fountains. This is the set-piece of the city and it is best before the terraces fill.
Give it ten minutes and look at the facades rather than the statue. Calea Unirii is where Craiova's nineteenth-century money went, and the stretch around the square is the densest surviving run of it.
Places in this piece
10:00 — The Art Museum
A two-minute walk north. The Art Museum occupies the Jean Mihail Palace, opened as the Aman Pinacotheca in 1908 and renamed in 1954.
Go to the Brâncuși room first, while you are fresh. Vitellius (1898) is the student bust — competent, academic, nothing removed yet. Orgoliu (1905). Then The Kiss (1907): two figures in one block, the first of a series he returned to for four decades, and routinely called the first modern sculpture of the twentieth century.
He learned to carve in this city — he enrolled at the School of Arts and Crafts in 1894 — which is why the collection is the beginning of a story rather than a selection from it. What he made at the end of it is two hours north at Târgu Jiu; the case for doing both in one day is in Brâncuși in one day.
Allow an hour. The rest of the collection runs past eight thousand works and will take as long as you let it.
Where to stay nearby
Live prices and availability on a map centred on this exact spot — hotels, apartments and hostels, so you can judge the walk from here rather than guess from an address.
Bookings made through this map earn us a commission. Your price is unaffected.
11:30 — Casa Băniei and the Oltenia Museum
Casa Băniei is the oldest building in Craiova and now holds the Oltenia Museum's ethnography section — the region's material culture, which is the context for everything you will eat and buy later.
The history and archaeology wing is a few minutes away. If you have children, swap it for the natural sciences wing instead.
13:00 — Lunch
Eat on or just off Calea Unirii, and eat Oltenian if you are only doing this once: *ciorbă de perișoare*, then *tochitură* with polenta, a fried egg and sheep's cheese. The weekday *meniul zilei* is the best value in the city.
What the regional kitchen actually is, and where to find it, is in where to eat in Craiova and what to eat in Oltenia.
14:30 — Romanescu
This is the half of the day most one-day visitors skip, and it is a mistake.
Romanescu Park is ninety-six hectares laid out around 1900 by the French landscape architect Émile Redont and a gold medallist at the 1900 Paris Exposition. It works a natural valley rather than flattening it — slopes, a lake, a suspended bridge over a ravine, a grotto — which is why it looks like nothing else in Romania.
Two hours walks the good part of it. The zoo is inside if you have children.
In July and August this is not optional but mandatory: the city averages a 30 °C daily high and the centre has no shade. See the parks.
17:30 — The centre again, in better light
Back to the middle, and walk the pedestrianised stretch of Calea Unirii properly, then the Old Town lanes off it. Late afternoon is when the facades are worth photographing.
If you have half an hour spare, the Botanical Garden is closer to the centre than Romanescu and almost empty on a weekday.
19:30 — Dinner and after
Dinner in the centre, then a terrace in summer or a wine bar in winter. Ask for something from Segarcea, twenty-nine kilometres south — southern Oltenia grows proper red, which is unusual in Romania.
If it is between 13 November and 3 January, swap the evening for the Christmas market, which is in the square you started in.
If your day is a Monday
Most Romanian museums close on Monday, and several ethnographic collections close on Tuesday too. A Monday in Craiova is a walking day: the square, Calea Unirii, the Old Town, Romanescu, the Botanical Garden, the stadium. All of it is outdoors and none of it closes.
What you will have missed
Oltenia entirely — Târgu Jiu, Horezu, Segarcea, the Danube. That is the second day, and the measured distances for all of it are on that page. If you have two days, use the second one on the road; the itinerary is in two days in Craiova.
