Today the veritable political, cultural and economic nerve centre of the Moldovan Republic, 500,000-strong Chisinau started life as a pious little Monastic enclave upon the fertile plains of the Bîc River. Then came the Russians and the machinations of imperial colonialization, and Chisinau became a reluctant frontier town between the Ottomans and the Tsars. However, this deeper history was all but wiped out with the dual catastrophes of the Second World War and a particularly destructive earthquake in 1940, levelling the centre in a medley of Nazi raids and metamorphic movements. That is why it is Soviet architecture that really dominates here. The town’s recent explosions in culture and art are all taking place in the rather gleaming new inner district, cut-through by the bubbling strips of the Bulevardul Ștefan cel Mare and home to the pleasant Central Park and Park Ştefan cel Mare. Around this central space, totemic effigies of Moldovan monarchs belie this small nation’s indubitable pride, opera and ballet houses erupt with some of the finest shows in Eastern Europe, and the Pushkin Museum stands as a reminder of the great writer’s exile from Mother Russia. Chisinau tour guides also help counterbalance the utilitarianism of the USSR, by revealing the wealth of gardens and green spaces that around the peripheries of town, from lively Rose Valley to the timber churches of sprawling Botanica Park.