Iasi ruled Moldavia for three centuries before it handed Romania its first king-in-all-but-name. Its stone is layered: 1580s fortress monasteries, Cuza's Union rooms, a 1670 synagogue, and a hillside cottage that became the country's first memorial house.
Vasile Lupu's 1639 church sheathes its stone walls in 30 carved bands of geometric lace, once gilded. Inside rest the tombs of Dimitrie Cantemir and Alexandru Ioan Cuza. Open daily 08:00–20:00; the Gothic Hall museum is ticketed separately.
The 17th-century stone house with pointed arcades where Metropolitan Dosoftei ran Moldavia's second printing press from 1679, issuing the first Psalter in Romanian verse. Now a museum of manuscripts, wooden type and early Cyrillic printing.
Prince Petru Schiopul raised this fortified monastery on the hill west of the river in 1582, its Byzantine cross plan ringed by defensive walls and a bell-tower gate. The church holds the prince's family tombs and a full view back over the Bahlui valley.
Gheorghe Duca built this walled complex in 1669 as a princely refuge with its own palace, Turkish bath and an escape tunnel running toward the city. The compact church copies Trei Ierarhi's proportions; the terrace overlooks the whole of Iasi.
Alexandru Ioan Cuza lived in this 1806 Empire-style house from 1859 to 1862, when Iasi was co-capital of the United Principalities. Rooms keep his desk, uniforms and Union documents; it later sheltered King Ferdinand in WWI. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00.
Fellner and Helmer's 1896 theatre is Romania's oldest and was electrically lit before most of the city had power. The Venetian-glass chandelier and painted ceiling survive, and Romania's refugee Parliament sat in this hall during 1917.
Cuza founded Romania's first university here in 1860. The neoclassical main building's Sala Pasilor Pierduti carries Sabin Balasa's 19 cobalt-blue frescoes, painted 1973–1987, tracing Moldavian history in a single sweep of corridor.
Built in 1670 and sunk half below street level under Ottoman rules on building height, this is Romania's oldest surviving synagogue. Beside it stands the memorial to the June 1941 pogrom, when over 13,000 Jews of Iasi were murdered or died on the death trains.
Ion Creanga's two-room wattle-and-daub cottage on the Ticau slope opened in 1918 as Romania's first memorial house. Clay floor, loom and stove stand as the storyteller left them, in the hillside lane where Eminescu visited him. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00.
Vasile Pogor's 1850 mansion hosted the Junimea society from 1863, where Titu Maiorescu, Eminescu and Creanga argued modern Romanian culture into being. The original salon survives with the members' portraits and meeting-minute books.
Opened in 1876, Iasi's monumental cemetery holds Junimea writers, members of the 1917 French military mission under General Berthelot, and mass plots of Romanian and Russian war dead. Cast-iron chapels and Art Nouveau tombs line the central alley.
Grigore II Ghica rebuilt this 1583 foundation in 1726 as a princely summer residence, adding a neoclassical church, gate tower and ornamental lake. Ghica's tomb and the shell of the palace wing stand behind the walls in the Nicolina quarter.