Customs & traditions

Moldovan hospitality

One of the best-known traits of Moldovans. The guest is welcomed with bread, salt and a glass of wine, and the table — always abundant — is considered sacred. Hospitality is part of the country's deep identity.

Hospitality is perhaps the best-known trait of Moldovans — the art of receiving a guest with an open heart, with a full table and with a glass of good wine. In the Moldovan village, to lodge and to feed a stranger is not merely a courtesy, but an almost sacred duty, through which the host shows his humanity, his joy and his respect towards the one who has crossed his threshold. This warmth has become, in time, a genuine mark of the people.

Bread and salt

The emblematic gesture of welcome is receiving a dear guest with bread and salt, laid on a woven towel, often accompanied by a glass of wine. The custom has very old roots, predating Christianity: the offering of bread — at first of the grain of wheat — and of salt was the sign of accepting the one who came into the host's house or onto the host's land. Bread symbolises abundance, the fruit of labour and life itself, while salt symbolises steadfastness, purity and the bond of friendship that does not spoil.

The Moldovan table

Among Moldovans, to prepare and to offer food is the supreme proof of esteem and friendship. The host will always find a choice house wine for the guest, and the housewife brings to the table the best dishes — plăcinte, sarmale, zeamă, roasts, mămăligă with cheese and sour cream, plăcinte with cheese and herbs. The quantities are often overwhelming, and a refusal to taste more is hard to accept: for the host, an abundant table and a well-fed guest are a matter of honour and of pride.

A way of being

Hospitality shows itself especially at the great events — weddings, christening feasts, patron saint's day celebrations — when the gates open wide to all, acquaintances and strangers alike. This warmth in receiving people has also become a tourist calling card of the Republic of Moldova, promoted through rural guesthouses, through the wineries and farmsteads that invite visitors to the table, to wine tastings and to village life. Beyond any ritual, hospitality remains a way of being, the expression of a culture in which the person beside you is always welcome at the table and in the heart. Foreign visitors are often surprised by the generosity with which they are received, by the insistence of their hosts on feeding them and by the sincere warmth of the people here, a trait that has made Moldovan hospitality a genuine reputation.