Seaside

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.

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.

The 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.

Constanța's old town, on the site of ancient Tomis: Ovid Square, the Roman mosaic, the mosque and its minaret, the cathedral, the Genoese Lighthouse and the casino seafront, all a few steps apart.

A strip of sand between the Black Sea and Lake Golovița, in the Danube Delta, reached only by boat from Jurilovca: a wide beach with reed sunshades and a single resort.

A 98-hectare former lagoon between Saturn and Venus, with reed beds, open water and sulphur springs where swans, egrets and black-winged stilts stop over; you watch it from the surrounding roads.

A narrow strip of sand below a high earth cliff covered in scrub, next to the oldest working lighthouse on the Romanian coast, with clear, turquoise-green water.

The last village on the Romanian coast, a kilometre from the Bulgarian border: two kilometres of fine sand, terraces open until dawn and the waters of a marine reserve.