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Constanta began as Tomis, a Greek colony founded in the 6th century BC on a limestone promontory jutting into the Black Sea. The Roman poet Ovid arrived here in 8 AD not by choice: Emperor Augustus banished him for reasons scholars still argue over, and Ovid spent the last decade of his life writing mournful letters from this remote frontier of the empire. A bronze statue of him surveys Ovid's Square in the old city, and the Constanta History and Archaeology Museum holds Roman floor mosaics spanning over 2,000 square feet, uncovered during construction work in the 1950s.

The city passed through Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Ottoman hands before Romania took control in 1878 following the Russo-Turkish War.

That multicultural layering produced a remarkable urban fabric: the Grand Mosque of 1910 with its 30-meter minaret sits blocks from the 1885 Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, and the Art Nouveau Casino on the seafront promenade, commissioned the same year as the mosque, is one of the most ornate buildings on the Black Sea coast even in its current state of partial decay.