Moldova document photos online

Reach for any banknote in Moldova and the same stern medieval face stares back: Stephen the Great, the 15th-century prince who fought off the Ottomans, appears on every single denomination from 1 to 1,000 lei. The currency itself is named after a lion that never lived here, borrowed from a Dutch silver coin, the lion-thaler, that circulated through the Romanian lands in the 1600s. And when Moldova printed its first notes in 1993, conditions in Chisinau were so poor that its banknotes had to be designed and produced abroad, in Bucharest and later France, a young state literally outsourcing the look of its own money.

• Passport power In the 2025 Henley Passport Index, Moldova's passport ranks 48th worldwide, granting visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to roughly 121 destinations, ahead of Russia.
• Visa-free Europe In April 2014 Moldova became the first Eastern Partnership country to win visa-free Schengen access, but only for holders of biometric passports carrying a facial-image and fingerprint chip.
• Currency name The leu means 'lion,' a name borrowed from the Dutch lion-thaler coin that circulated through the Romanian principalities in the 1600s, though Moldova has no native lions.
• Banknote design Every Moldovan banknote, from 1 to 1,000 lei, shows the same portrait of Prince Stephen the Great, with the back of each note carrying the opening lines of the folk ballad Miorita.
• Outsourced money Because facilities in Chisinau were unsuitable in 1993, Moldova's banknotes were designed at Romania's central bank and are now printed in France, with coins struck in Romania and the Czech Republic.
• EU candidate Moldova was granted EU candidate status in June 2022, and well over a million of its citizens have separately acquired Romanian passports by descent, gaining full EU mobility.
• Wine record The Milestii Mici cellars hold the Guinness-recognised largest wine collection on Earth, around 1.5 million bottles, stored along roughly 55 kilometres of underground limestone galleries.
• Shrinking nation The 2024 census counted just 2,409,207 residents, a 13.6 percent drop from 2014, making Moldova one of the fastest-shrinking populations in the world.
• Deep history Flint tools unearthed in Moldova in 2010 are estimated at 800,000 to 1.2 million years old, among the oldest traces of early humans found in Europe.