The seaside of Romania stretches from the Danube Delta to the Bulgarian border, but the part with developed beaches is much shorter: the strip between Năvodari and Vama Veche, with Constanța in the middle. The north means the wild beaches of Corbu, Vadu and Sfântu Gheorghe; the south is the string of resorts built in the 1960s and 1970s, Costinești, Neptun–Olimp, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, each with a style of its own. The sea has no tides and is less salty than the Mediterranean, and the season runs from June to early September. Mamaia is the largest and loudest resort; Vama Veche, at the border, has stayed the most bohemian.
Mamaia Beach and the Constanța Casino, on the city's seafront, are the landmarks of the north; Eforie Nord is the classic family resort; Vama Veche closes the line in the south. For a beach without a resort: Vadu Beach and Sfântu Gheorghe Beach, at the mouth of the Danube.
Top 100The second resort of the Romanian coast, on the strip between the Black Sea and Lake Techirghiol: three kilometres of fine sand and a sapropelic mud cure a few hundred metres from the waves.
The wild beach where the Sfântu Gheorghe branch meets the Black Sea: 30 km of fine sand, 2 km from a Delta village that can only be reached by water.
Romania's easternmost beach, where the Sulina branch meets the Black Sea: very fine alluvial sand, an unusually wide strip and water that stays shallow for tens of metres.
A wild beach of shell-strewn sand at the village of Vadu, inside the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve: low dunes, not a single building and an earth track down to the sea.
The only marine reserve on the Romanian coast: the waters between 2 Mai and the Bulgarian border, with stone reefs, brown seaweed beds and mussel banks to see with a mask or on a dive.
The resort where Romanian spa tourism began, on the highest cliff of the coast: interwar villas, an Art Deco casino and a beach recently widened to over a hundred metres.
The city's own beaches, from the fish market down to the cliff below the old town: three and a half kilometres of replenished sand, with Modern, Trei Papuci and Tataia one after another.
The last wild beach at the southern edge of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve: shell-strewn sand, dunes and a low earth cliff, with no hotels, sunbeds or lifeguards.
The youth resort of the Romanian coast, 31 kilometres south of Constanța: an east-facing beach, the white obelisk on the sand and the rusting wreck of the cargo ship Evangelia.
Top 100The longest developed beach on the Romanian coast: eight kilometres of sand on the spit between the Black Sea and Lake Siutghiol, widened by more than a hundred metres with dredged sand.
Six kilometres of wide sand north of Mamaia, split between the beach clubs of Mamaia Nord and the roomy, quieter town beach of Năvodari, with shallow water for hundreds of metres.
Two resorts built side by side north of Mangalia, between the sea and the Comorova forest: a beach widened to a hundred metres, two lakes right behind the sand and 1970s architecture.
A Lipovan fishing village between Mangalia and Vama Veche, with a beach set in a small bay, a fish station at its southern end and the waters of the 2 Mai – Vama Veche marine reserve.
The only marine dunes left on the Romanian coast, protected since 1939 in the grounds of the Agigea Marine Biological Station: rare sand plants, tortoises and a free themed trail.
The ruins of the Greek city from which Mangalia grew: the circuit wall with its towers and the Syrian-type basilica on the clifftop promenade, steps from the beach, plus the town's archaeology museum.
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