Iași audiotours

Iasi served as capital of the Principality of Moldavia from 1564 to 1859, then of the United Principalities, and briefly as Romania's wartime capital from 1916 to 1918. Romania's oldest university, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, opened here in 1860, and the first newspaper printed in Romanian rolled off a press in Iasi in 1829. When Mihai Eminescu, the national poet, published his most important work, it was in the Convorbiri Literare review launched by the Junimea literary society in Iasi in 1867. The city has been telling the country's intellectual story longer than any other.

The Palace of Culture, completed in 1926 on the site of the old Moldavian royal court, is an extraordinary neo-Gothic structure that dominates the lower city with its towers and elaborate stone facades.

Four museums operate inside its 365 rooms, including the Museum of Romanian History and the Art Museum, and the building itself makes the case for Moldavian ambition in a way that requires no explanation. The exterior is best seen at dusk when the stone takes on a honey color and the towers read against the sky.