Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, on the northeastern corner of the Balkans. The country spans a total of 33,483 km2 (12,928 sq mi) and has a population of approximately 2.5 million as of January 2023. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised breakaway state of Transnistria lies across the Dniester river on the country's eastern border with Ukraine. Moldova is a unitary parliamentary representative democratic republic with its capital in Chișinău, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre.
Dragoș, a Vlach voivode and founder of the Principality of Moldavia, 19th-century depiction
Built during the reign of Stephen the Great, several authors believed the Soroca Fort was constructed on the site of a former Genoese fortress named Olhionia.
Monument to the villagers who died in World War II, the village Cojușna, Strășeni District.
Bessarabia Germans evacuating after the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia in 1940.
Romanian is the official and main language of Romania and Moldova. Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin which separated from the Western Romance languages in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries. To distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian. It is also spoken as a minority language by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania, and by the large Romanian diaspora. In total, it is spoken by 25 million people as a first language.
Neacșu's letter is the oldest surviving document written in Old Romanian that can be precisely dated
Lithograph of a group portrait by Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, showing Paris-based revolutionaries during the early 1840s. From left: Rosenthal (wearing a Phrygian cap), C. A. Rosetti, anonymous Wallachian
Ion Creangă
Hurmuzaki Psalter, written around 1500