Things to Do in Balti: A Self-Guided Walking Tour of Moldova’s Second City
8 min readA short guide to visiting Balti, the second-largest city in Moldova.
Moldova’s second-largest city behind Chisinau (or third-largest if you count Tiraspol), Balti (Bălți) was the dark horse of our 10-day road trip around the country. In hindsight, it’s the one place I wish we had given ourselves more time for.
Sometimes referred to as Moldova’s northern capital, Balti rose to prominence as a market town and transport hub under the Russian Empire. In Soviet times, it was developed into an industrial city, producing everything from submarine sonar systems to irons.
Brutalist buildings, Soviet-era monuments and mosaics abound in Balti, making it a must-visit for fans of architecture and other remnants from this period.
As a city, Balti is very pleasant indeed, with a big pedestrianised mall, and plenty of sidewalk cafes and restaurants. When we arrived late on a Saturday afternoon and found half the city out for a sunset stroll, I was instantly reminded of a small Albanian city – and Balti definitely has echoes of Kutaisi, too!
Since there isn’t a lot of information about Balti online, I decided to put together a quick travel guide in the form of a 24-hour walking itinerary.
While one day and night was enough time for us to cover the highlights, I do suggest spending an extra day in Balti if you prefer a slower-paced exploration, with more time to track down additional mosaics and buildings. I know there are a couple we definitely missed!
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How to get to Balti
Balti is located in the northwest of Moldova, around 140 kilometres (87 miles) from Chisinau, or 2 hours by road.
By car, it’s an easy drive via the M14 highway, skirting Old Orhei and Curchi Monastery – both of which are excellent stops. Street parking is readily available in the city centre.
Direct buses to Balti depart from Chisinau’s Gara Nord bus station throughout the day starting from 7am. The fare is around 100 lei.
Where to stay in Balti
We spent one night in Balti at the DBS Hotel on the western side of town. The rooms here are a little dated, but everything is very clean, and the staff are warm. Free secure parking is available out front. There’s no need to set your alarm as the barracks across the road kicks off drills in the early morning!
Elite Hotel is another option closer to the centre of town. If you prefer to stay near the bus station at the eastern end of town, Hotel VisPas has good reviews.
Things to do in Balti: Self-guided walking tour
Here are the highlights of Balti, organised into a logical one-day walking route. At the end, I have included an interactive map with all these points of interest plotted out.
Start on the eastern side of town at Balti’s Central Bus Station. From the street, the building looks completely deserted – but there are people around, and based on recent reviews, it does appear to still be functioning as the main autogara. If you are coming from Chisinau by public transport, this is where your bus terminates.
The curved wave concrete wall at the front of the bus station is decorated with a fabulous three-dimensional mosaic sculpture. It depicts a stylised sun, flowers, and what could be the crescent blade of a sickle rendered in blue.
As with most cities in Moldova, Balti’s main street is named in honour of Stephen the Great. From the Bus Station, follow Stefan cel Mare west, and you will soon come to the District 9 neighbourhood.
This particular microdistrict is full of five-storey prefab Khrushchyovka apartment blocks, many of which are decorated with mosaic panels on their outer ends. I read about these mosaics in this piece on The Black Sea. According to the author, the imagery combines folklore with Socialist realism “to promote hope in an industrial future embedded in the myths of the past.”
The motifs in these mosaics are quite different to what you see in other former Soviet Republics such as Georgia. Two of the panos depict women with braided hair dressed in traditional Moldovan costume. Another shows two faceless workers toiling over an anvil, and another – my favourite of the bunch – shows a Prometheus-like figure riding a wave against a Moldovan Cyrillic inscription.
These mosaics are not pinned on any map that I could find, so it took us a while to track them down (thankfully we had our rental car to speed up the process). I have included coordinates for each mosaic on the map linked below.
Continuing down Stefan cel Mare, you will eventually arrive at Balti’s main square and Stephen the Great Monument. On one side of the square, you have the Orthodox St. Nicolae Cathedral, and on the other, Balti’s Roman Catholic Church.
Angled to face west onto Independence Street, the latter has a very eye-catching design, with a tiered tower and open-frame belfry. It was built after Moldova gained independence from the USSR and replaces Balti’s original interwar Catholic church, which served the city’s Polish and German Catholic community.
Mihai Volontir Central Park opens up in front of the church, and features several sculptural complexes including a memorial to the singer-songwriter and poet Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky. A T-34 Tank Memorial sits in one corner of the park to commemorate the Red Army’s role in WWII.
Continue down the pedestrianised Independence Street, and the Central Market or Piața Centrală will be on your left. Built in the 1970s, the main covered pavilion has an interesting semi-circular glazed facade.
The Vasile Alecsandri National Theatre sits opposite the market hall. Founded in 1957, this was one of the few Romanian-language theatres to receive state support during the Soviet period, and it was first to be named a National Theatre in independent Moldova in 1990. The monumental brick facade features contrasting ornamentation, and a cast-metal sculpture of three stage actors and musicians above the door.
Past the nearby fountain, a colonnade with the inscription ‘Pe-un picior de plai…’ marks the entrance to another smaller park. The opening line from the folk ballad Miorita translates to “Upon a stretch of meadowland…”
Balti’s Alley of Classics – a sequence of busts belonging to various national poets, authors and playwrights – runs in front.
At the end of the Alley, the Centrul Multifuncțional Balti building sports a high relief of Marx, Engels and Lenin on its southern end. Probably built as a House of Soviets originally, the tuff-faced building now serves as Balti’s public service centre.
Just across the way, the Municipal Culture Palace has musical-themed relief sculptures on both ends of its front facade, although they are partially obscured by tall trees.
On the opposite side of Sadovyanu Street, the Hotel Balti is one of the most unique buildings I saw in Moldova. Three cylindrical towers in textured beige stucco, each pierced with a portal window, house different businesses, while the still-functional hotel – once an Intourist – sits behind the space-age facade.
A little further down the same street, the tiny Saint Gregory the Illuminator is an Armenian church built to serve the merchants and traders who settled in Balti and across Bessarabia during the time of the Russian Empire.
Back on Independence Street, the corner building with the Prometheus bookstore on its lower level has a unique brise-soleil made of extruded aluminium on its upper levels.
A few doors down, the Ion Creanga Library has three bronze sculptures mounted above its door, the central image showing three children buried in a book, with a dragon, birds, and other whimsical motifs swirling around. Tall apartment buildings rise up behind the library, framing the relief perfectly.
When it’s time for a lunch break, Andy’s Pizza has a branch on Independence Street, a few doors down from the library. Sit outside overlooking the pedestrian mall. Directly opposite, Coffee In serves great specialty coffee.
After lunch, make a right on Strada Pushkin to see the Mihai Zipmuxu Primary School. A mosaic panel showing a skipping schoolgirl and two friends building a block tower is visible from outside the fence – I was lucky to slip in when the gate was open. Hidden in tall grass, the nearby slide and playground complex are similarly clad in mosaic tiles of bright, primary colours.
I have seen a similar playground mosaic in Georgia – at the Gelati Sanatorium in Tskaltubo.
From there, you can loop back around to Stefan cel Mare Street, where a humble Monument to the Victims of Chernobyl sits inside a hedged fence. I had never seen such memorials before visiting Moldova – you just don’t find these in the Caucasus.
On the opposite side of the road, Balti’s Museum of History & Ethnography is located inside the single-storey blue building with the silver cupola. This is one of several neoclassical buildings on the street that I assume date to the time of the Russian Empire.
Behind the museum and a few blocks west, Balti’s industrial zone opens up. We missed out on seeing the Uzina Lenin factory and the larger-than-life mosaic of its patron – if you make it there, please send me a photo!
For dinner, we enjoyed both the food and the atmosphere at Beermaster Pub, a German-style restaurant attached to a brewery on the southern end of town. I recommend trying the mamaliga (polenta) and the Mar Viu, a special non-alcoholic kvass-like apple juice that is made onsite.
If you are leaving Balti via Gagarin Street in the direction of Chisinau, be sure to make a stop for the mourning mother monument, a larger-than-life sculpture of a woman standing proud with a folded banner in her hands.
Also at this location, a little monument to Misha the Olympic Bear stands on the roadside. At the time of our visit, his face had unfortunately been… Misplaced! But you could still see his distinctive silhouette.
A tip: Park your car near the cemetery behind the monument and walk back down to the road – there is nowhere to safely stop on the highway.
Balti map
